


The Twice Forged Soul

by Allubttoa



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alien Cultural Differences, Alien Planet, BAMF!Keith, BAMF!Lance, Blood Magic, Evil Lotor is evil, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Galra Keith (Voltron), Half-Blind!Keith, Humans Colonies on an Alien Planet AU, Identity Issues, Identity Porn, Keith's Space Wolf is Best Boi, M/M, POV Alternating, PTSD, Secrets, Self-Sacrifice, Slow Burn, So many space opera tropes, Soul Bond, Soul Magic, eventually, keith pov, lance pov, magic bonding, soul bonding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-06-28 12:32:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 40,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15707304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allubttoa/pseuds/Allubttoa
Summary: On a planet where a person’s soul can be consumed as energy, power comes at a heady cost.Keith, an escaped blood sacrifice for Lotor, is on the run from Zarkon's forces. But when he realizes that a dear friend might not be as dead as he once believed, he decides to go to any length and sacrifice everything to get him back. Meanwhile, Lance and his crew are just trying to survive on a hostile planet, ferrying goods between isolated settlements.What starts as a simple mission to bring medicine to a dying settlement for Lance and his crew, and an impossible rescue attempt for Keith, quickly entangles them both in a far-reaching plot, one where the soul of the entire planet hangs in the balance. [ Very vaguely Firefly-esque/Trigun-esque space western AU with an added heaping of soul bond tropes]





	1. The Man with the Luxite Blade

**Author's Note:**

> **Trigger warning for depiction of self harm. It's not done for the actual intention of harming oneself, nor is it depicted that way. Instead, it's a way to use magic in this universe. However, if you are sensitive to self-harm (use of blood for 'magic') or to the depiction of scars, then this might not be the fic for you. Please take care of yourself. 
> 
> ***A couple more things. Pidge genders herself female in this universe, but is currently performing her gender as a male for reasons, and thus the POV character for the first few chapters misgenders her. Also trust me with the Kuron stuff. It's going somewhere. I promise.

*~*~* 

_There once was a man whom Keith Kogane loved more than anything else in the universe._

_The man’s name was Kuron, and he promised to set Keith free._

*~*~* 

Keith Kogane was born weak and small. His eyes didn’t work the right way and his skin was too pale. 

But that never seemed to matter to Kuron. Kuron was everything Keith wasn’t: strong, powerful, brave, and selfless, a born leader. Kuron was a likely to tear an enemy limb from limb as to show Keith how to play children’s games with bits of string. He was the Champion of the Galra, famous for the sacrifice he willingly made to the Black Lion, the Emperor’s greatest weapon. 

Keith knew that Kuron carried many scars. The older Galra had let him feel them once when they had first started spending time together, and Keith would still sometimes reach over, run his fingers down the other man’s arm, feel the rough imperfection there. They were as much a part of Kuron as his gentle laugh or his steady heartbeat. 

Intellectually, Keith knew that creating blood scars was an ugly process, but he didn’t truly understand what Kuron suffered through until the Druids proclaimed Keith himself ready, until they came for him. Kuron might belong to the Emperor’s Lion, but the Emperor’s son had his own weapon and his own tribute to feed it. 

Keith would never forget when the day came, when the Druids finally held a Luxite blade to his own arm, how they had led him inside the then dormant Red Lion and held his arm over the main console. How the simple, physical pain morphed as his blood dripped down onto the interface of the Lion. How it dug deep into his bones and pulled something out of him that was never meant to be touched. The Red Lion came alive then, invading his mind, trying to consume him from the inside out, clawing, clawing, clawing, until one of the Druids jerked his arm away from the console, wrapping it quickly. 

Behind him, Prince Lotor grinned and placed an oddly gentle hand on his shoulder. “Excellent work, _blood brother._ ” 

Keith whimpered. 

One of the Druids proclaimed the bonding a success, and they all withdrew to discuss how to incorporate the newly wakened Red Lion into their war plan. 

Keith went to Kuron afterwards, his mind dull and limbs heavy. He felt like a piece of himself had been carved out, mutilated, made ugly. Some part of him was afraid for Kuron to see him like this, but another part knew that older Galra was the only person who could possibly understand. After all, Kuron had woken the Black Lion for Zarkon not once, but dozens of times. 

When he saw Keith, Kuron spent a long time staring at him in silence, so long that Keith ached to retreat. But he was frozen in place, and he had to wait until Kuron shuddered, hard and painful. 

“Come with me,” he said, and he grabbed Keith’s hand. 

Keith didn’t realize where they were going until they were already standing before the Red Lion again. He inhaled the scent of free flowing quintessence, and he felt betrayed. Of all the places to take him, Kuron had led him to the place he wanted to be least. He could feel the Lion’s attention on him, a slippery, hungry thing. She’d tasted him once, and he knew that she would consume the rest of him in a heartbeat if he ever allowed it. He flinched back, demanding, “Why would you take me back here?” 

Kuron squeezed his hand in reassurance, but Keith was having none of it. He snarled up at the monstrous creature built from metal and wires and sacrifice. “I hate the Lions,” he declared vehemently. 

Kuron said simply “I don’t.” 

With that, the older Galra gestured to him to enter the Lion, but Keith hesitated. He didn’t want to go inside the thing, be trapped in there like a mouse in its gullet. Kuron sounded impatient. “Don’t let yourself be controlled by fear, little brother. She’s yours now.” 

Keith couldn’t help but run his fingers over the bandage on his arm, imagining the long, livid scar that was already forming there. A match to the dozens that already marred Kuron. He could feel the other man’s anxiety, his attention circling the hanger around them, and for the first time Keith wondered if they were allowed to be here. 

Kuron tugged on him again, and this time Keith let himself be led. Still, he couldn’t help but argue as they ascended to the cockpit. “But she isn't mine. She’s Lotor’s.” 

That was a truth that the Druids had pressed upon him again and again. The Lions required a sacrifice of Quintessence to be piloted, so Lotor and his father had devised a way to use another’s energy instead of their own. Keith was little more than a battery to the Lion. Lotor was her true master. 

Keith heard Kuron grind his teeth, and not for the first time, he wished he could see the other man’s face. 

They entered the cockpit together, and Kuron immediately walked up to the main console. Keith could still smell his own blood from earlier, and he wondered if the console was stained red for Kuron to see. Kuron placed his hand on it with a sigh, keeping his back turned to Keith. The younger Galra still didn’t understand what was happening, so he decided to wait Kuron out. 

It didn’t take very long for Kuron to interrupt his own silence. “I’m going to set you free, Keith,” he said softly. His fist scrabbled against the console as he spoke, but he still refused to turn and face Keith. 

Kuron was the hero of the Empire, pilot of the Black Lion for Zarkon, and a man of duty and honor. That was the Kuron Keith knew, and he had no idea what to do with this creature who stood before him, vibrating out a wave of sorrow and resolve so deep that even siphoning off his soul to Black Lion hadn’t dimmed it. “What are you talking about?” Keith demanded, his voice going high with his unease. 

But Kuron did not answer his friend. Instead, he withdrew a knife from inside his armor. He held it in his left hand, then laid his right arm over the Red Lion’s console. Keith’s ears went flat as understanding swept through him. He shouted, “Kuron, no! Wait!” 

It was already too late. Keith smelled the copper tang of fresh blood in the air, heard it dripping onto the console. When Kuron spoke next, his voice was tight with pain. “Never forget this, Keith,” he said as the Lion blinked to life around them. 

“True power requires sacrifice. And true sacrifice requires blood.” 

*~*~* 

*~*The Man with the Luxite Blade*~* 

*~*~* 

When Keith dreamed, he dreamed of nothingness. 

He dreamed of a nothingness that swallowed him whole. He’d realize that he couldn’t feel the wind against the hairs of his arms and that the constant warmth of the leather band around his neck was gone. The smells that told him so much about the world around him, rain on the horizon, the sourness of his own sweat, suddenly all nonexistent. 

The last thing that left him was always sound. No chitter of animals or groaning dirt moving under his feet. He couldn’t hear the rustling of his own clothes, and then worst of all, what always sent him back to wakefulness with a gasp of air, was that he couldn’t hear his heartbeat. He couldn’t feel his own limbs, couldn’t open his mouth to scream, and it surely had to be death because it stretched out endlessly, time collapsing in on itself, yet his mind still horribly aware and horribly alone, because there was nothing, absolutely nothing—. 

And then he was awake. 

Keith rolled over, limbs curling with tension, fists clenching and unclenching. He fought to remind himself that it wasn’t real, it was never real. 

The sound of whuffling near his ear briefly warned him before a wide, slobbery tongue drenched his cheek. Making himself take a deep breath, he leaned his weight into the animal trying to drown him in spit. Kosmo yipped as Keith ruffled his fur. “Shh, It’s okay,” Keith soothed the wolf. 

With another deep breath, he took stock of himself. He and Kosmo had been traveling hard over the past month, trekking across the unforgiving canyons that bordered most of the human settlements on Balmera. His clothes were ragged, scent acrid from built up grime, and his shoes had become little more than strips of cloth. His hands were hard and cracked from wear and dust. The wolf had fared better, but they were both down to rangy muscle, all fat stripped away under the heat of the Balmeran sun. 

They had spent the hot part of the day protected by a curving canyon wall, but he could tell by how the baked smell of sandstone had faded that the sun was beginning its retreat. With another sigh, he wrapped his scarf back around his head and collected the meager belongings that had survived this long trip. A firestone, a canteen that was currently dangerously empty, a few strips of dried meat, some string, wire, and his knife, wrapped in rough, torn fabric. 

“Come on, mutt,” he called. “Time to move on.” And so with his heart still racing in its cage, scent still sour with fear, he and the wolf walked, just like they had for the last twenty-eight days. 

At least they did for a good hour. Then he and wolf reached a cliff’s edge, and the wind changed, bringing him the scent of salt and water. 

_The ocean._

Keith wasn’t very good at keeping track of the distance they had traveled. He knew what direction he needed to travel and that was enough, which was why he was more surprised than he probably should have been as he realized what that meant. He and the wolf had finally reached their destination. 

They walked further with new vigor, always following the cliff line and keeping the scent of the ocean to their left. The cliff line climbed higher and higher, and Keith struggled to remember the map descriptions Kolivan has so graciously given him. Finally, the path leveled out again just as Keith’s legs threatened to give out on him in protest. Up here, the wind brought him a new smell, the scent of gunpowder, plastic, and something else that was distinctly—human. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. 

As the wolf collapsed down and rolled on his side, tongue lolling, Keith gave himself a moment to enjoy the triumph of having finally made it across the damned desert, past every obstacle that had so far stood in his way. He was impatient, but he knew he had to play this right, to go in with a plan. 

After all, he wasn’t going to get a second chance to break into the Garrison. 

*~*~* 

When Lance dreamed, he dreamed of salt on his tongue. He dreamed of sand and sweat drying into sticky white beads down his tanned legs. He dreamed of laughing children, racing barefoot across a hot pier. It was a good dream, and he was sad to feel it fading away when he blinked awake to the sight of flashing lights and dingy metal. 

The cargo ship’s main terminal beeped out a warning with an annoying whine, which was what had woken him. It insistently told him that the hydraulic fluid in the left turbine was dangerously low. He sighed. The hydraulic fluid in the left turbine had been dangerously low for the past two weeks, and it was just going to have to make it a bit longer. They didn’t have the funds or the means to replace it right now. As he was looking for a way to shut the damn warning off, he heard the hiss of the cabin door sliding open. 

“Hey man,” greeted Hunk, his engineer and dearest friend in the entire universe. “The left turbine is—.” 

“Super low on hydraulic fluid?” Lance interrupted with an eye-roll, gesturing to the beeping of the main terminal, which was only getting shriller the longer it was ignored. 

Hunk quirked his lips indulgently, but leaned over Lance and ran his fingers over the terminal in a quick pattern that left Lance’s eyes reeling, but thankfully shut the beeping up. 

“I knew how to do that,” Lance mumbled petulantly as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. 

“Unhuh.” 

Lance sighed again. He swiveled the pilot’s chair around. “Can you make it stretch?” he asked, voice going serious. 

“Already did. Took some fluid from the gasket and watered it down. But there’s a leak.” 

Lance absorbed that news grimly. “Will we make it to New Haven?” They were still less than a third way across the canyons between the Garrison and its far inland neighbor. If they were going to turn around, it would have to be now. 

Hunk hesitated, and they both glanced back through the open cabin door to where their cargo lay in stacks. Glowing a soft yellow, “Fragile: Handle with Care” was stamped in red letters across the many boxes. Grimly, Hunk said, “I’ll make it work. I can use the lube from the gear shaft, mix it in.” He met Lance’s eyes with a questioning look. Even Lance, with his limited engine knowledge, knew that removing the lube from the gear shaft would destroy that mechanism in the long term. If Hunk did that, they’d have to replace the gear shaft as well as the apparently cracked turbine as soon as they landed. 

“Do it,” Lance said, and Hunk’s eyes crinkled in grateful relief as he nodded, before disappearing through the cabin door. 

When humans had first come to Quintescent, they’d come for all sorts of reasons. Some following that inborn, deep human drive for discovery, others to escape the cloying claustrophobia of an overcrowded Earth, some for the potential scientific revolution, and many because of their various gods, eager to either escape persecution or to bring the good word to a new group of sentient people. 

New Haven, as the name implied, had been settled by people seeking a paradise away from Earth, one without war and strife. They had created a town that thrived on inclusivity and cultural exchange with the local aliens. They kept to that ideal even after they discovered that contact with other species involved more than just meeting people with purple skin or stony faces. Life came in all shapes and sizes, as did predators. 

The people of New Haven, Hunk’s home, were dying of a virus originally little worse than a cold. But it was little worse than a cold for the Balmerans. For humans it was deadly, unless they were given the anti-viral that the scientists at the Garrison had recently developed. Something as important as an anti-viral should have gotten the full convey treatment across the desert. But New Haven had long ago rejected the Garrison’s more militaristic tendencies and their ‘benevolent’ leadership. 

Now they suffered for that choice. 

Lance sighed. There was no point in going back to sleep. The Nav system informed him that they were nearing the permanent dust storm that raged across a huge portion of the Balmeran Sea, the canyons between the Garrison and New Haven, which meant he was about to have to fly manually and go under the canyon line, through the ever shifting maze of tunnels and rock. There was an odd concentration of metallic substances in the rocks of the canyons that eventually began to wreak havoc on any electronic system, rendering the Nav completely useless. This was where a good chart was worth its weight in credits. Starting now, Lance only had his wits and his charts to get them to the other side of the dust storm with their ship in one piece. 

Lance settled in, shifting the control to manual. He heard Hunk dropping into the engine below him, and a few seconds later, Pidge, their communications expert, sat down next to Lance, tablet in hand, swearing under his breath and typing faster than Lance could follow. Pidge was a strange one, young and terse, preferring to stare at computer screens as opposed to chatting with his crew mates. But he was excellent at his job, far better than Lance deserved with their meager pay. 

The first few hours of this portion of their trip went by fairly normally, but then everything went to shit. Because of course it did. 

The entire ship suddenly shuddered. Pidge was still sitting next to Lance, doing his best to control the damage the terrain was doing to their computer systems, while Hunk hung somewhere below them, underneath the wire mesh floor, buried in a pile of wires and beeping alarms. 

“Hunk!” Lance shouted, kicking at the wire mesh as he tried to compensate the controls and get them steady again. 

“On it,” came a rather frazzled sounding answer. “And quit kicking dust down here, Lance!” 

“Quit breaking my ship!” 

“It’s only half your ship!” 

“Shut the fuck up. Both of you,” Pidge interrupted as he furiously typed on his screen. “Fucking amateurs.” 

“Hey!” Lance started, but he trailed off as the ship came too close to the cliff wall and scraped down the side with a round of punching noises.” Lance winced. 

Pidge glared at him. “You know, I’m pretty sure that’s how the titanic sank.” 

Lance didn’t get a chance to respond because that was when a new alarm suddenly went off, flashing a purple light, and both Lance and Pidge froze. 

Lance’s heart squeezed all of the air out of his chest as he stared at the purple light _. It couldn’t be. Not here. Not now._ “Lance,” Pidge whispered, and this time his voice was quiet, vulnerable. 

_Afraid._

The purple warning light was one of those things that you always trained for in a warm, sunny classroom but never actually expected to see. The dangers of the canyons were well-known, but Lance had been doing cargo runs for the past year and half and had never seen that light before. Part of him had always thought he would somehow go his whole career without ever having to call out a Code Purple. 

He’d been so naïve. 

Lance gulped, his mind whiting out. He felt strangely numb as he read out, “Code Purple. I repeat, we have a Code Purple.” He heard Hunk go still and he saw Pidge staring at him, and then Lance realized that he didn’t have time for shock or fear or any other feeling, because right here and right now he had two people whose lives were in his hands. He couldn’t afford to panic. 

Lance spat out instructions in a far steadier voice than he would have thought he was capable of. “Hunk, drop the Flash reserve canisters in the fuel chamber. We’re going to punch it. Pidge, prepare the system for a Flash. I want to be ready to go in thirty seconds.” 

“Copy,” Pidge replied in a small voice. Hunk didn’t bother, but Lance heard him moving to the right position. For himself, Lance prayed that the cargo was secure enough in the cabin hold for what he was about to do. 

The computer system told him that three ships were coming up behind him, far closer than they had any right to be. The terrain had probably fucked with their radar long enough to hide their pursuers. Goddamn the Nav system. 

Galra raiders. Usually not directly affiliated with the empire as even Zarkon didn’t care to hold on to this useless pile of rock and dust storms, but still deadly. The Galra tended to build ships that had little armor, but were incredibly fast and maneuverable. Their smaller size made it infinitely easier for them to navigate than Lance’s bulky transport. 

The raiders were zooming down on the canyon floor a few hundred feet behind the cargo-ship. With a grimace and a prayer, Lance jerked the controls up, shooting the cargo-ship nearly vertical. 

The ship groaned and made a sound that was far too close to metal tearing for Lance’s comfort, but it went up. It went up, and Lance saw through the front glass the speeding Galra ships shoot past them, already skittering and swerving around, but then the cargo ship was above the canyon line. 

Up here, dust and wind made visibility non-existent. Controlling the ship was also nearly impossible. Lance shouted at Hunk, “Hunk!” 

“Ten seconds!” 

“I don’t have ten seconds!” 

Pidge called out, “Ready!” 

“Hunk!” 

“Five seconds!” 

The ship tumbled sideways as they were hit by blaster fire. The Galra had followed then above the canyons, despite the fact that their smaller ships could handle the wind even less than the humans’. 

Lance screamed, “Hunk!” 

“Go!” Hunk finally replied, his voice muffled under the wind and engine buzz. 

Lance yanked on a long handle near the control grip. 

Nothing happened. 

“Hunk!” 

“It’s the hydraulic fluid!” Hunk’s panicked voice came from the floor. “Goddammit! We can't build up enough pressure to start the Flash.” 

Once again the ship shuddered against blaster fire, and several more warning lights lit up. 

Hunk’s voice called out, “That was the gravity stabilizer.” 

The gravity stabilizer was what kept them flat and centered when performing complex maneuvers. “Clips on!” Lance commanded as he followed his own advice, clipping himself into his chair. It wasn’t the worst thing for him or Pidge, but having to maneuver around a clip was going to slow Hunk down significantly. 

“We have to drop the cargo,” Pidge said as he desperately worked at his own job, fingers flying across his screen. He jerked several wires out of a side panel and into the main terminal. “It’s the only way. That would reduce the strain on the turbine.” 

“No,” said Lance immediately. We do not drop the cargo. Out of the question.” 

“Then we’re all going to die!” Pidge shouted. 

Once again they were hit, and once again, the warning lights went crazy. Lance had completely lost control of the ship. At this point they were just being buffeted around by the wind. The only reason they weren’t in pieces already was that the wind was making it even harder to maneuver for the Galra than for them. Most of their shots missed. _Most of them._

“That was the fucking oxygen,” Pidge snarled. “I know you need to bring these meds to New Haven, but you’re about to lose the cargo and us, and then who are you helping? Drop the fucking cargo and then try the Flash again before we end up a pile of rubble.” 

“I—,” Lance began. Just then, the oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling. “Masks on,” Lance called out mechanically. His hands trembled on the controls. 

“I didn’t sign up to die for them,” Pidge said right before sliding on his mask. 

Lance stared at Pidge’s frantic face, made alien by the oxygen mask. Time seemed to freeze. He had to make a choice, and he had to make it now. Dammit, he’d known the hydraulic was low. He’d known what danger that could pose, but they’d gone anyway, sure that the righteousness of their actions would somehow protect them. And as the pilot, the responsibly lay on Lance and no one else. That was what it meant to be a pilot, to make hard choices, to make sure that your crew came home. 

His job was to make sure Pidge and Hunk made it home. _God forgive him._ The pilot fumbled at his terminal as lights flashed all around him and the wind screamed. The computer made him confirm his choice. 

“Lance, what are you doing?” Hunk cried out from under them. The engineer’s own terminal would have informed him of what Lance was about to do. “Lance!” Hunk repeated. “Lance!” 

Lance hit the confirm button. The cabin door slid shut, sealing them in. There was a single moment where Lance’s eyes met Pidge’s, horror and shock visible even through the oxygen mask. 

Then the cargo-hold jettisoned away. 

The ship bucked at the suddenly lightened load, and Lance barely kept it upright. “Prepare to Flash,” Lance commanded, turning to face his terminal and refusing to look at Pidge. 

“Lance,” Hunk called for a third time. 

Lance swallowed down his bile. “That was an order,” he said mercilessly. “Prepare to Flash.” 

They were all silent as they did their various jobs. As before, Pidge was the first to say, “Ready,” followed by the strangled sound of Hunk. 

This time, when Lance yanked on the lever, it felt like the entire ship was squeezing together, gravity collapsing on itself before stretching back out. Then G-force slammed Lance back into his chair, making his teeth rattle. 

The Flash canisters were based on Galra quintessence technology and they allowed the ship to move in one great burst of uncontrolled speed, so fast it was impossible to direct but also impossible to track. The impossible to direct part was why they needed to be above the canyon wall to keep from barreling straight into a rock face, and the impossible to track part was why it was their only chance against the Galra. 

Lance’s eyes closed against the overwhelming force as they tore across the desert more like a rocket than a ship. The main terminal shot up a systems failure warning, but before Lance could react, the ship shuddered again and then spun out, the entire left side dragging them into a roll. “Turbine!” shouted Hunk, but Lance couldn’t do anything but fight to stay in his chair. Even with the clip, his body jerked up, head nearly slamming against the ceiling. His stomach dropped out from under him just as the sound of the wind disappeared completely. 

They’d had fallen back down into a canyon. 

Lance was whipped around as they scraped down the side of a rock face. Pidge screamed, and everything jerked and rattled until finally the ship came to a rest. 

For a second, the only noise was the shrieking of the various warning systems, then Lance slumped against his chair and muttered, “Fuck.” 

*~*~* 

Despite how far he had come with just himself and the wolf, Keith knew he would never be able to break into the Garrison without help. He just didn’t have enough information about his enemies. But thankfully for him, he wasn’t the only one interested in what the Garrison was doing in its sub-levels. 

A few miles away from the Garrison, in the shade of a crumbling rock formation, he found a buried communicator and a few bits of loose machinery. Well, actually Kosmo found it, snarling when Keith wrestled his hard won prize away from him. 

Keith didn’t do very well with communicators normally. His eyes couldn’t read screens, but clearly someone had anticipated his arrival, word apparently traveling far faster though the resistance network than he and the wolf could walk. A human braille convertor had been attached to the device. 

Not only was there the braille keyboard, but the message itself was in English, not Galran. He wondered what sort of Galran operative worked in English rather than their native language. Keith was rusty on both ends, but he figured out the code easily enough and deciphered the message. His contact would know when he had activated the communicator. The machinery buried alongside the communicator were the parts he needed to build a few small but powerful bombs. His contact had been assured that Keith would know what to do with them. 

At this point, all he had to do was wait on the signal and be ready to move when the time came. 

“Well, Kosmo,” he said, “Looks like now we wait.” Kosmo primly ignored him in favor of investigating a nearby game trail. 

After putting the communicator and the bomb parts in his bag and deciding that the best thing to do for now was to find decent shelter, Keith fingered the leather band around his neck. It was worn and warm from his body heat. _Kuron,_ he thought with a pang, _I’m coming for you. Just hold on a little longer._

He thought about how he had woken so many months ago from what amounted to a long coma inside of the Red Lion and into a world in which Kuron no longer resided. _Dead._ He remembered how the Blade of Marmora, the resistance against Zarkon and his Empire, how they’d showed him the video. There was a fucking video, memorialized forever, of Kuron falling to human treachery. Kuron crying out as he was skewered through the heart. 

Keith shivered in outrage as he thought about it. Kuron deserved so much better than a filthy human battlefield. 

But then the dreams had started. And he’d known. Known the same way he that knew Lotor still lived, that the wolf was bonded to him, that the Black Lion and Red Lion were aware and sentient. He’d known through the blood that carried his soul. 

Kuron lived. 

Keith clenched his fist around the leather band. Then he cocked his head, listened for the wolf, and followed him up the game trail. 

*~*~* 

Lance couldn’t think of a worse situation he had ever been in. 

Hunk’s voice trembled as he read out the various system errors. The left turbine was completely down. That was what jerked them out of the Flash, the sudden instability of only having momentum on one side of the ship making them spin out. The gravity stabilizer was also completely shot, though the backup oxygen had finally kicked in so they’d at least be able to ditch the masks if they ever got the ship high enough in the air to need them. 

But most importantly, the systems (as unreliable as they were) hadn’t picked up any more Galra raiders the entire time they’d been sitting dead in the water, which meant that they had probably gotten away from their pursuers, at least for now. Of course, if they sat here for too long, they’d likely be discovered again, and a ship like theirs only carried enough Flash canisters for one punch. 

Hunk ascended to the cockpit after he finished his systems check. His face was thunderous, not a hit of his usual chill joviality. “The anti-viral,” he said, raising his hand in a broken gesture at the pilot. Lance could only stare at his friend, for once rendered speechless. 

Instead, Pidge was the one who spoke, his tone pitiless. “If we had been caught by the Galra, New Haven still wouldn’t have the anti-viral. Lance made the right call.” 

Lance blinked at that. Usually Pidge was the first to have something to say about his leadership style, so it was always surprising to hear the comm expert be positive. But there was something odd in Pidge’s expression just now, something cruel and desperate. Lance’s temples ached as he stared closer at the younger man. He vividly remembered Pidge screaming, “I didn’t sign up to die for them.” 

Pidge _was_ brave, brave enough to face death head on. You had to be to do what Lance and his crew did. Nor could you care very much about the compensation. Lance and Hunk ferried cargo across Galra infested land because the Garrison was unwilling to and because they cared about the settlements isolated on the far reaches of the desert. 

Accepting this job, Pidge was clearly willing to die for something, and if not for people like the citizens of New Haven, then for what? 

Hunk interrupted Lance’s thoughts, his words muddled through gritted teeth, “I understand that. But we had all the anti-viral batches the Garrison had produced on this ship. Even if we go back, it’ll take days, weeks even, to get them to formulate new batches, and meanwhile my people—.” 

“I know,” Lance interrupted softly. “Hunk I am so, so sorry.” 

Hunk stared at him with wide eyes, tension in every line of his body. Then the larger man sagged, defeat working its way across his posture. “We can't change it now. I suppose we just have to work with the hand we’re dealt.” 

Lance nodded, far more positive than he actually felt. He couldn’t bear to see Hunk so worn down, especially because of a decision he had made. The thought of all the lives at New Haven was overwhelming, and he couldn’t afford to freeze himself with the weight of what he had done. That wouldn’t help anyone. “We’ll get the turbine spinning, go back to the Garrison, and make them start a new batch of anti-viral. I’ll get the money together to replace the turbine and the gear shaft. No problem.” He pumped his fist for good measure, trying to forcibly infuse his body with optimism he didn’t feel. 

Pidge didn’t look reassured, but he also didn’t argue, which was all Lance could really ask for. Hunk gave him one last broken look, then said, “I can reposition the counterweights by the right turbine. It’ll be tricky, but I think I can get the ship moving again on one turbine.” 

“Do it,” Lance commanded. 

“I’ll recalibrate the Nav system to compensate for the turbine shift,” Pidge offered. 

Hunk didn’t acknowledge Pidge’s words, instead turning his back on them and lowering himself back into the engine bay. Lance’s stomach winced in sympathy as Pidge’s face fell and then hardened. 

“Get to work,” Lance said, trying to distract the comm expert’s attention away from Hunk’s anger. “Let’s get this piece of junk moving again before we end up as some Galra raider’s lunch.” 

*~*~* 


	2. The Girl with a Secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith causes chaos, and Pidge is shady as fuck.

*~*~* 

Like many families who had come to Quintescent in the early days of the giant Altean warp gate, Lance’s family had a sort of mythology around the first of their ancestors who had made that leap of faith in leaving Earth to settle on an alien planet. 

“Let me tell you a story,” his grandmother used to say, as she gathered all of her grandchildren around herself, “A story about the most beautiful woman on Earth.” 

One of his cousins would always blurt out, “Who? Who was the most beautiful woman on Earth?” They all knew the answer, but the asking was an important part of the ritual. 

Their grandmother would smile benevolently at whichever cousin had interrupted. “Her name was Rosita, and she had hair black as midnight, eyes bluer than the ocean, and a spirit wilder than a storm.” This was the point at which all of the grandchildren would make the appropriate ahhhing and oohing at the image grandmother created of their mythological ancestor. “You see, Rosita loved adventure more than anything else. And there was no greater adventure than space travel. So her father, because he loved her so very much, paid for Rosita to go to school at the best space program in the world, the great Garrison Space Program in Texas. And for a while, Rosita was truly happy.” 

Knowing what came next, the children would always lean forward at this point, waiting with bated breath. 

“But then everything changed for Rosita,” their grandmother would say, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper that always forced the children to lean even closer. “For just one year before she was set to graduate, Rosita discovered that her father had lost their entire fortune, every last penny, to a bad investment.” 

“No!” 

“Yes! And now there was no one to pay for Rosita to finish her schooling. But even more terrible, her father’s plan to reverse their fortunes involving selling his daughter, the loveliest woman on Earth, to man she did not love.” 

“He didn’t!” 

“How could he do that to her?” 

Their grandmother would give them a warning look then, even though they all knew that she loved the interruptions. But once they all quieted back down, she would continue, “Rosita became desperate. With no way to finish her schooling, and facing a lifetime of servitude, all of her dreams seemed to be coming undone. But your great, great, great-grandmother was a wild creature, brave and magnificent. She would not submit to her fate so easily.” 

“Of course not.” 

“Rosita took a gun, and she drove out into the desert to stand beneath the stars that she loved so much. Because for Rosita, it was better to be free and dead, than enslaved.” At this point of the story, the younger children would always clutch each other or hold their fists to their mouths. “Rosita, the most beautiful woman on Earth, stood beneath the stars and she held a gun to her head. But then, the impossible happened.” 

“What happened, what happened?” 

“The sky opened up,” their grandmother would say, always with a flourish as her grandchildren bounced in excitement. “The sky tore open in a blaze of color and wonder, and out of the hole came people from another world.” 

“The Alteans,” one of the older children would knowledgably contribute. “It was the Alteans.” 

Their grandmother would nod. “Yes, it was. They had built a weapon called Voltron that allowed them traverse and discover the universe through wormholes. We were the first planet that they found with intelligent life. But your great, great, great-grandmother Rosita saw that hole in the sky, and she knew it was a sign. For neither her father nor her fiancé could have followed her to another world. And so Rosita did not look back. She did not pack a bag, nor did she wish her family goodbye. Brave and desperate Rosita simply put the gun away and walked to a new world.” 

*~*~* 

The first time that Keith met Kuron, he was ten, and he didn’t yet understand what it meant to be sacrifice to a Lion, just that it was in his own future. That summer, he lay in the sick ward of Zarkon’s palace, sweating out a fever. Keith’s memories of that time were hazy, filled with strange fever scents and sounds. But he remembered waking up at one point to sense movement above him. The stranger, Kuron, smelled like nothing else Keith had ever experienced before. He smelled like ozone, power, and smoke. Like blood and death, dry heat and red dust. 

The stranger placed a hand on Keith’s forehead, and Keith burned with the touch. He groaned, nearly missing the older man whispering, “You’re a fighter, little brother. Don’t you dare give up on yourself now.” 

Keith didn’t have it in him to respond, instead falling back into restless sleep. At some point the Druids came by, working magic and blood to no avail. Keith drifted in and out. But he remembered every time the man smelling of ozone and heat and dust visited him. The man never stayed long, but he always placed a hand over Keith’s brow, and Keith always burned with it. 

Keith was young, but he was aware enough to understand that the healers were slowly giving up on him, that his weak, small body was failing him. 

His last real moment of lucidity before his fever came to a head happened while Kuron was visiting him. The hallway was quiet in a way that told Keith it was long past dark. Kuron’s ozone scent had permeated the room around Keith, informing him that the older Galra must have been sitting with him for a while. 

Keith blinked his useless eyes open, more to let his visitor know he was awake than anything else. 

The other man shifted and then spoke conversationally. “You have a beautiful soul, Keith.” His voice echoed softly in the quiet, a contrast to Keith’s raspy, ragged breathing. “I’ve seen it—seen the fight in you these past few days.” Kuron paused as Keith lay immobile, lacking the energy to even turn his head. His eyes drifted closed again when Kuron eventually continued in that soft voice, “If I were a kinder person, perhaps I’d help you die here, save you from destruction at the hands of Lotor. There’s no life in being a blood whore. Not for long.” 

A wave of movement, and then the stranger pressed something metallic and blissfully cold to Keith’s neck. 

Keith fought as his body tried to drag him down into oblivion, sleep clawing at him insistently. He struggled to make his limbs obey him, and finally, he managed to raise one hand, his fingers curling into a loose fist. He rasped wordlessly. 

The cold pressed deeper, and he smelled copper. “You’d be free of him,” whispered the stranger harshly. “Isn’t that a better fate?” Keith clawed at the man with weak fingers. His consciousness drifted away despite his best effort. 

The next time he awoke, his fever had broken, and all that had passed seemed like a distant dream. The only thing he truly remembered of those clandestine visits from Kuron was the smell of ozone and power. The sense that this man was _more._

*~*~* 

Before he left the Garrison program for good, Lance came home on a break to visit his family. Shamefacedly, he told his parents about his mediocre grades. He sat through an awkward meal prepared by his mother and all of his aunts. And then he gathered with his nephews and nieces to listen to their grandmother tell stories, though he had grown far too old to still be captured by the magic. 

After his younger family members were trotted off to bed, Lance sat before his grandmother, and in a fit of uncharacteristic bitterness, told his grandmother, “If you think about it, great, great, great-grandma Rosita was really stupid. I mean, who jumps straight from ‘I don’t want to get married’ to ‘I’m going to kill myself?’ Why didn't she just run away or something?” 

His grandmother didn’t seem too upset at his line of questioning. She chuckled mildly. “Perhaps she didn’t think there was anywhere on Earth that she could have gone to escape her fate.” 

“It just seems all well and good when you frame it like some big adventure, but Quintescent isn't exactly the freaking Garden of Eden.” 

Because the part of that story that his grandmother had left out, was that more and more humans had come to Quintescent in the years after that first opening of the wormhole, until many of the natives had begun to fight back, calling the migration an invasion. 

The leader the Alteans, Alfor, the man who had originally opened up the wormhole in the first place, was eventually betrayed by Zarkon, murdered and his people massacred. Zarkon had wanted to use Voltron to send a weapon down to Earth, to destroy what he considered Quintescent’s invaders and then close the wormhole for good. He hadn’t quite managed the destruction of Earth part, as Alfor had closed the wormhole himself and split Voltron into pieces rather than see his machine turned into a weapon. 

Even with only a fifth of Voltron operational, Zarkon had still wreaked havoc on the remaining humans on Quintescent, at least until his Black Paladin had been killed. That blow had put a halt to Zarkon’s bitter war on the humans, but everyone knew it was only a matter of time until he resumed. 

“Maybe it isn't,” his grandmother conceded, drawing his attention back towards their conversation, “But I think Rosita had a choice to make, and she made the only that she could live with. She knew what was most important to her, and such conviction is something we should admire.” 

Lance scoffed and slouched down further. “I always thought I knew what was important to me, but now I’m not so sure.” His grandmother didn’t reply, though he could tell she was avidly listening. He had always loved that about her, the way she never crowded him during conversations like this. “It’s just, I always wanted to be a hero, you know? Someone like Shirogane. Someone who helps people.” 

“But?” 

“But I’m starting to think that the Garrison isn't the place to do that,” Lance admitted. “And I don’t know what to do.” With a sigh, he looked at her as if she might hold all of his answers for him. 

“Maybe it’s time that you thought about what choices you can live with, Nietecito. That’s not something anyone else can tell you.” 

Lance sighed louder. “I know.” 

His grandmother stood slowly, her bones creaking. “But you know what?” she asked him as Lance helped her shuffle to her bedroom. 

“What?” 

“I don’t think Rosita ever had any regrets, despite what this planet eventually turned into. And I think few people could say the same.” 

*~*~* 

*~*The Girl with a Secret*~* 

*~*~* 

In the end, Lance and his crew made it back to the Garrison one piece, the ship wheezing and rattling like it was about to collapse into a pile of bolts at any moment, but they did make it. 

Of course, waiting for them at the Garrison wasn’t exactly a welcome home party. 

“You’re telling me that you dumped all the of the anti-viral I gave you in the desert and left it for Galra raider scum?” The man drilling Lance was tall, every button on his perfectly pressed uniform in place. His name was Iverson and he hated Lance nearly as much as Lance hated him. 

“We didn’t have a choice, sir.” Since he had been kicked out of the Garrison, Lance didn’t have to follow military protocol anymore, but old habits were hard to break. 

“This is why you weren’t cut out for the Garrison, _cargo pilot._ No nerve.” 

Behind him, Lance heard Hunk take in an outraged breath at the insult, but he knew Hunk was smart enough to keep his mouth shut. “New Haven needs that anti-viral, sir,” Lance said through gritted teeth. 

“New Haven needs to get its hippy head out of its hippy ass,” replied Iverson. “We don’t have the resources to keep subsidizing their filthy habits.” This came with a rather pointed look at Hunk, who bristled at the implication. 

Pidge piped up, his voice quiet and cold. “So you’re going to let them die then, sir?” 

Iverson turned his focus towards the shorter man. “Gunderson was it? No, I’m not going to let those harebrained idiots die. Human is still human; I ain’t heartless. But I don’t have anti-viral to pull out of my ass. New production will take at least two weeks.” 

_Two weeks._ And then they still had to get the anti-viral across the desert. How many people would die in that time? 

Lance thought that would be the unfortunate end of the discussion as Iverson turned around, clearly about to dismiss them. But Pidge’s eyes narrowed, his energy suddenly tense and belligerent. He spoke at Iverson’s back. “But you do have more anti-viral, sir. Five more cases, I believe.” 

Iverson froze. He slowly swiveled back around to face them. With a dangerous lilt, he asked, “And just how would you know that, Mr. Gunderson?” 

Both Lance and Hunk stared wide-eyed at the showdown, afraid to interrupt with so much as a breath. Pidge shrugged blandly. “One of the techs who helped load our cargo must have accidently showed me the log.” He raised one lazy eyebrow, “Whoops.” 

Iverson looked like he had swallowed a particularly sour lemon. “Even if that were true,” he spat, “The Garrison needs to keep a stock of all vaccines and anti-viral on hand in case _the Garrison_ needs it. I don’t have any to send New Haven.” 

Clearly unable to hold his outrage in any longer, Hunk burst out, “But they’re dying right now! There’s no Balmeran flu at the Garrison! There are no Balmerans here to spread it. You don’t need the anti-viral, and they do!” 

“This isn't a negotiation Mr. Garrett. It’s through my good graces that you are allowed to dock a civilian ship here at all. You’re a drain on my resources that I barely tolerate on the best of days. Don’t try me, son.” 

Lance had never seen Hunk look colder than in that moment. He spoke plainly, each word enunciated perfectly clearly. “With respect sir, my father is in New Haven right now, dying of a curable disease.” Hunk shook his head and commanded fiercely, “Don’t you dare ever call me son again.” He didn’t pause for Iverson’s reaction. With those words, he turned around and walked out, head held high. But Lance still saw the shine to his eyes that spoke of barely contained tears. 

Lance could also see Pidge opening his mouth, and he didn’t wait around to see what the comm expert could possibly have to add to that. With high pitched, weasely cheer, he grabbed the back of Pidge’s shirt and yanked while babbling, “Well, we thank you very much for you time. It’s always such a pleasure, Iverson, but we’ve got—repairs and—stuff. So, we’ll just be on our way. Come along now.” 

Following Hunk’s example, he decided it was better not to look back to gauge Iverson’s reaction. As they walked quickly down the hallway back to the hanger, Lance said to Pidge, “If you knew that the Garrison had more anti-viral cases, why didn’t you say so earlier? Not cool.” 

Pidge scowled, but purposely stared straight ahead, refusing to meet Lance’s gaze. “New Haven is a pretty big settlement, Lance.” 

“I know that. I’ve been there, dude.” 

“Five cases are what, a hundred and twenty-five vials? There were six-hundred people sick last we got a transmission. It’s not enough.” 

“But if Iverson weren’t such an asshole, he could give us those cases, and we could deliver those while we wait for more production.” 

“Exactly,” replied Pidge. And really, there wasn’t much else to say about that. 

They found Hunk inside the cargo ship, angrily beating on a piece of the engine with a wrench. 

Lance spoke to announce their presence as he and Pidge walked up. “While I’ve heard that beating on stuff ‘till it works is a legitimate repair strategy, I don’t think that’s quite the right method here.” 

Hunk jerked around. He swallowed noisily a couple of times and wiped his eyes. It pained Lance to see the normally cheerful engineer reduced to this. Without thinking, he reached forward and enveloped Hunk in a full body hug, pressing as tight as he could. Head squashed in the other man’s shoulder, he murmured, “I am so, so sorry, Hunk. God.” 

Hunk let out a heavy sigh into to Lance’s neck, tickling him. “Thank you,” he whispered back. They held each other for a few more minutes, neither caring about the somewhat intimate implications. They had never cared about what others thought about their friendship. They knew what they were to each other and that was enough. 

But still, when Pidge cleared his throat pointedly, Lance reluctantly drew away. He pressed his eyes shut, tried to center himself, then gave Hunk’s arm one last affectionate squeeze. When he looked back over towards his comm expert, Pidge was nervously fingering a leather band around his neck. The band was long, and Lance had never actually seen what was attached, but he had seen Pidge playing with it before when agitated. 

“How much are you willing to sacrifice to get those cases of anti-viral?” Pidge asked, eyes flicking up from the leather around his neck. 

Hunk slowly turned around to stand with Lance. “What do you mean?” he asked cautiously. 

Pidge’s expression was vicious, almost alien. It vividly reminded Lance of the look they had shared right before Lance ejected the cargo load. Pidge cocked his head. “We could just take it.” 

Hunk, for all that he was the most affected by their failure, was the first to object. “Are you insane?” he spluttered. “Even if we could somehow move hundreds of pounds of cases into the ship without anyone catching us, the ship itself is busted! Fucked to hell and back. She won't fly.” 

Pidge shrugged again. “There are other ships in the hanger.” 

“Garrison ships! You’re talking about stealing a Garrison ship! We’d never be able to show our faces here again. We’d be wanted criminals!” 

“But New Haven would have the anti-viral,” Lance cut in, suddenly seeing where Pidge was going with this. 

Hunk rounded on him. “Oh no. You can't actually be listening to this crap, Lance.” 

Lance was already feeling the cold pit of determination settling in his stomach. _Just what would he sacrifice to get medicine to the citizens of New Haven?_ It was a question he didn’t want to have to answer. “Your dad would have medicine. Your family,” he reminded Hunk. 

“Don’t talk to me about my family,” Hunk snapped at him, but it was weak, and Lance knew he had won. Pidge knew it too, judging by how he turned away and started planning out loud. “It isn't just the five cases. The Garrison’s been sealed tight about their anti-viral formulation. Iverson wants New Haven begging him for help.” 

“We all know that,” Hunk interrupted impatiently. 

“So we break into the research lab. We take the formulation and the five cases. With a sample and the formulation, New Haven should be able to reverse engineer their own anti-viral.” 

Hunk bit his lip, but he still looked thoughtful. “New Haven doesn’t have the scientific resources of the Garrison.” 

“I doubt they’ve been sitting on their ass while this virus is going around,” said Lance, “They’ve got some kind of lab. We can cross that bridge when we get there. They at least deserve a fighting chance.” 

All three crew members stared at each other then, all unsubtly gauging how serious the others were. Pidge fingered his leather band again. “Iverson doesn’t have the right to let people die because of his dick measuring contest. I can hack the computer in the research lab for the formulation if we can get in there.” 

“Do you have to be the lab itself to hack it?” asked Hunk. “Couldn’t we hack in from the main system?” 

Pidge shook his head. “The lower level research labs are on their own server. I need to physically plug in to get access.” 

Lance needed to be sure. “But if you got in one of the sub level labs, you _could_ do it?” What they were contemplating was far too large a risk for a maybe. 

However, Pidge didn’t hesitate. “Yes.” 

Lance blinked at his comm expert. Hacking into the Garrison network wasn’t something you did on a whim. Once again, he thought about how little he knew of Pidge’s true motivations. _I didn’t sign up to die for them._

Hunk frowned, apparently not interested in why Pidge had a hack of the Garrison server ready to go. “The sub-levels are guarded. How are we planning on getting down there?” 

Distracting him from Pidge’s weirdness, Lance couldn’t help the small grin that lit his face at Hunk’s use of the word ‘we’. This was really happening. 

Pidge had the answer for that too. “Mercaptan. There’s a special, highly concentrated formulation connected to the Garrison’s natural gas storage chamber. We could release that into the HVAC and start a mass evacuation.” 

“For those of us that aren’t science geeks?” 

Pidge just rolled his eyes, so Hunk answered Lance, “Mercaptan is a harmless chemical they mix in natural gas because natural gas itself is odorless. Mercaptan smells like sulfur. Some of the gas that the Garrison is storing comes from mining operations at the edge of the Balmeran Sea. That shit is more explosive than C4. If there were ever a leak—.” 

“They’d have to do a full evacuation,” finished Pidge smugly. “The entire complex could go up in smoke.” Pidge once again rubbed the leather around his neck as he waited for Lance and Hunk to give their opinions. 

“You just have this shit laying around?” Lance finally asked. 

“Yes.” 

Lance couldn’t contain his trepidation about Pidge’s motivations anymore. “ _Why_ do you have—?” 

The comm expert interrupted him. “Does it matter?” he asked, firmly speaking over Lance. “I have it, and we actually have a decent plan to help Hunk’s people. Are you in or not?” 

Put like that, there really was only one answer. Despite Hunk’s apparent forgiveness, Lance still had the weight of their earlier cargo loss on his soul. He met his best friend’s eyes and said, “I’m in.” Hunk was silent, but he reached over and clasped Lance’s hand tightly, saying with action what he couldn’t with words. 

Pidge grinned. “Excellent, let’s get to work then. The Mercaptan is in my room. It won't get into the HVAC all by itself.” 

*~*~* 

Keith had only been camping out with the wolf for two days when he smelled it. The communicator had said that he’d know when the signal came, and he’d been a bit nervous to just trust that, but this had to be the most obvious signal he’d ever received. 

The fucking smell. 

It didn’t take long to pack up his meager belongings and the new gently wrapped and protected bombs. He checked his knife, having sharpened it the day before. His heart tumbled in his chest, nerves thrumming. Keith hadn’t made any blood sacrifice since he’d woken up to find out that a year and a half had passed and that Kuron was dead. In that time, Keith’s blood bond to Lotor had thinned out to a gossamer string without any new sacrifice to strengthen it. It was nearly gone now, and in a few months Keith would likely be completely free. 

_Free._

It hurt to think of what Kuron had sacrificed to give Keith that chance. 

To make any blood sacrifice now, while still connected to Lotor, no matter how thin that connection had become, was as good as lighting a beacon and shouting ‘here I am!’ But without it, Keith had no chance of navigating a strange place. Making it blind across the desert, even with Kolivan’s map, had been hard enough. 

Maybe a different person would have waited, decided that Kuron would have wanted Keith to honor the price he’d paid by keeping his head low and letting the sickly bond completely die. But Keith could never have sat there, knowing that Kuron lived, knowing he was imprisoned, and just waited for the right time. That wasn’t a sacrifice Keith could make. 

The wolf picked up on Keith’s nerves and whined softly. Absently, Keith rubbed his ears while turning the knife over in his hands. Now wasn’t the time for hesitation. He doubted this mysterious contact would give him another chance. 

With a grimace, Keith held out his left pinky finger. Making a blood sacrifice for himself rather than another person and making it merely to enhance senses he already possessed wouldn’t require much. In fact, it might be so small that Lotor wouldn’t even notice. _Fat chance._

He carefully pricked the tip of his finger and listened as a single drop fell. Then he concentrated on picturing the blood as his life force, as everything that made him Keith, a living sentient creature. He pictured it leaking away, leaving him. Pictured the scar that remained behind, a place where all the things that made him— _him_ didn’t fit together perfectly anymore. Where he was damaged just slightly, but damaged all the same. 

The wolf shivered and raised his hackles. Keith felt the warmth flowing though him, the sheer high of his soul, infinite power converted into energy he could use. He fought to control himself, to allow no more that this single drop, pressing his other fingers against the spot he’d nicked. The pull to just let lose, to set himself free and drown in that energy was immense, almost overwhelming. But that was an instinct that led to oblivion. 

The world abruptly opened up as Keith blinked his eyes against sudden light. He couldn’t see like other people, even with this sacrifice. Kuron and he had actually spent a good while trying to figure out just what his eyes were picking up when he did this. He could see life, but certain types of life were far clearer than others. He could also see odd currents flowing through the ground and air. But they’d eventually figured it out when Keith had described how Kuron’s scars stood out clearly to him. Keith was seeing Quintessence. 

His other senses, strong as they already were, became enhanced as well. The smell that had already been unbearable suddenly made him want to be sick against the rocks. He wrinkled his nose in disgust and tried to breathe through his mouth. It didn’t help. 

He looked at the wolf. “You could stay here, you know. A potential fire fight with the humans is no place for a wolf.” 

Of course, the wolf didn’t answer, just following Keith as the Galra started picking his way down the slope towards the fortified Garrison. “Fine, have it your way,” Keith told him with false irritation. Secretly, he was selfishly glad that the wolf would follow him even into this hellhole. No one else had ever stayed with him like that. 

Not even Kuron. 

As he came closer, he could see the soft glow of hundreds of life forces as the humans traveled outside en-masse. He wished he could tell which ones were the guards and which were normal civilians, but unfortunately, the quintessence of armed humans wasn’t different from that of unarmed humans. 

What was more concerning though, was what else his quintessence vision revealed. There was a tower, round and squat, that he recognized as some sort of energy producing structure. That made sense. What didn’t make sense was what lay several hundred yards away in what looked like another building. 

_Quintessence._ Not that of living creatures or even the gentle flow of the planet. This looked—stored, concentrated. He hadn’t thought the humans were capable of using quintessence for energy, and this evidence to the contrary made the back of his neck prickle. After all, how could the humans possibly understand the inherent danger of such an endeavor? Plus, where would they even get the quintessence to store in the first place? Could they be draining sentient beings for it? 

Keith rubbed his smarting thumb. He was here for Kuron. He had to remember that. But he didn't think it was coincidence that Kuron was the most famous blood sacrifice the planet had ever seen, and as soon as the humans had him in their clutches, they somehow grew the ability to work with blood sacrifice themselves. 

No, coincidences like that didn’t exist. 

The Garrison was walled, but Keith could see the humans and their life forces like a beacon, so it was child’s play to find a break in the vision of the people standing around the edges of the wall keeping watch. The task was made even easier by the chaos of the evacuation, the herd of humans continually distracting guards who were supposed to have their attention facing outwards. 

The wall stood about twenty feet high, made of concrete and then several layers of barbed wire running across the top. As he came to the wall itself, Kosmo silently trotting beside him, Keith focused all of his energy. With his blood still singing from his fresh sacrifice, this took almost no effort. He tensed his muscles and then _Flashed_ , body moving too fast for a normal eye to follow. The force of his momentum carried him straight up the wall, limbs digging in and keeping him vertical. 

Right before his momentum inevitably slowed down and he began to slide back down the concrete, his fingers grasped the top, scrabbling for purchase. With a grunt, he hauled himself up, careful to avoid the sting of barbed wire. He crouched down and took a deep breath, letting the heat and adrenaline from his Flash fade away. 

When he was back to normal, he whistled softly, calling to the wolf. Kosmo moved far more gracefully than Keith ever could, millions of years of predator based evolution making his kind a natural at what Galra struggled to master. Mimicking Keith’s run up the wall, the wolf Flashed so quickly that it seemed he teleported. One moment he was on the ground, and the next he crouched next to Keith, tailed tucked in and hackles raised, panting. 

Keith leaned into the wolf, waiting for Kosmo’s panting to slow, his senses always focused outward, making sure they remained unnoticed. The smell of the sulfur and the noise of the evacuation made that difficult, but Keith was used to parsing apart dissonant, jarring information from his senses. 

They dropped down behind a row of identical buildings. Keith saw, not the buildings themselves, but the way the natural flow of quintessence in the air and ground parted around them. His shoes, worn as they were, helped him tread lightly, padding noiselessly around the edge of the buildings. The humans were all gathering near the west side of the complex in a large field. Here on the east side, the buildings were crowded together, narrow pathways helping Keith and the wolf hide their movement. 

He knew he would eventually need to infiltrate the main building, but the apparent vat of quintessence called to him like a siren song. He also knew that the Garrison would have automated defense systems that needed to be taken care of before he could safely navigate the building. 

There was no one guarding the door to the power generator. Keith almost thought it was too good to be true, but then he discovered that the door was locked. In dismay, he quickly felt along the edge and found a smooth square box with the slick surface of a screen. Some kind of number pad, but with a touch screen, which meant that Keith didn’t have a hope in hell of using it. 

He thought for a moment, then felt the building itself. Heavy concrete. The sound his rapping knuckles made suggested the walls were thick, far thicker than they needed to be. Another security measure. Would it be enough? 

He didn’t have time to second guess himself. Without a way into the building itself, he would just have to hope that the bombs he had made were strong enough to do the job from the outside. He planted two, setting the timer for twenty minutes. 

Coming to the building holding the quintessence, his luck continued to be shit. There were two guards in front of the door despite the evacuation of the rest of the humans. If he’d ever considered ignoring the stored quintessence, then seeing that they’d bothered to post guards here when all of the rest of the complex was fleeing sealed the deal for him. 

He paused, putting his fist in the scruff of Kosmo’s neck, pressing upon Kosmo that he must remain still. The concept wasn’t foreign to the wolf, as long as Keith connected it the idea of hunting. When it came to hunting and stalking prey, Kosmo was far more patient than Keith could ever be. 

The wolf growled low in his throat, but he obeyed, crouching down on his haunches, and Keith left him in the hidden shade of an alleyway. He then circled around the building housing the quintessence. The humans had thought to guard the front, sure, but that meant nothing to a Galra running high on blood. Just like he had with the outer wall, Keith focused his energy and ran vertically up the building. He moved crouched across the roof, then paused above the door overhang. 

He took a deep breath, suffusing his senses. The heartbeats of the guards came into full focus, along with the scent of their sweat and soaps. He followed their attention, noticing that they were far more interested in what was going on with the other humans than their own jobs. Keith slid his knife from his belt, the Luxite shining oddly to his wakened eyes. He crept right to the edge, then leaped down. 

The left guard died immediately. Keith’s knife sank through the top of his skull as Keith landed on the man’s shoulders. He and the dead man toppled over, but Keith was already up and moving. Instantly, his knife was under the chin of the second man. 

Keith spoke in heavily accented English, “Scream, and I’ll make sure you bleed out in seconds.” 

The man wisely remained frozen. “Open the door,” Keith ordered. The guard hissed, his eyes going to his fallen comrade. Keith pressed his knife into the meat of the man’s neck, drawing blood. “Open the door,” he repeated. “Do that and I’ll tie you up instead of slitting your throat. I promise.” 

With trembling hands, the man punched a key code into the pad beside the door. For a second, Keith expected an alarm to sound rather than the door to open, despite his threat. He clenched the knife in his hand, ready to flee the instant things went south, but the door slid open with a hiss. Keith couldn’t help the distaste that ran through him at the man’s apparent valuation of his own life at the expense of his job, even though it only benefited Keith. He pushed at the man’s back, jabbing him forward as they entered the building together. 

Inside was a big storage hall with a vat in the middle. Keith could smell the buzzing of electricity in here, just like had been leaking from the other building, and he realized that this place must also hold the backup generator. Either that or this was the main generator and the other building had housed the backup. Keith didn’t have enough knowledge of human technology to be sure. 

“Move and I’ll kill you,” Keith said absently to the guard. With a flick of his wrist, he pushed the man away from him. He walked a few step closer to the vat of swimming quintessence. Keith wasn’t too worried about the guard, even as he sensed the man slowly backing up. 

And yes, there it was. Kosmo’s nearly sub-bass growl as the wolf stalked into the building behind the guard, having apparently sensed that the need for hiding was past. The guard let out a little shriek as he finally noticed the wolf, and Keith smirked a bit to himself. 

As he came up to the vat, however, he swallowed down all emotion, raising one hand to the glowing glass. This close to pure quintessence, his eyes nearly burned from the intensity. He squinted, decided it was a lost cause, and just closed his eyes altogether. 

_Hunger. Awareness._

Keith flinched back, heart suddenly racing in his chest. He tried to steady himself as his lungs forced him to take shallow, painful breaths. He’s known this would happen, goddammit. He’d known. This was no time to panic. Of course making a blood sacrifice would draw the Lion’s notice to him. Which would draw Lotor’s awareness like a tick burred into its back. 

This containment vat wasn’t fully sealed. Keith saw that now, the strength of it keeping him from noticing the small leakage before. But now that he was focusing and he had the Lion’s attention for the first time in two years, he could feel stray quintessence swirling around his legs, strengthening him. And of course, the Lion, hungry as always, would pick up on that from across the desert. 

He could almost see her eyes lighting up in some godforsaken hanger bay. _Fuck you_ , he thought furiously and then did his best to block her out, to focus on the here and now. His sacrifice hadn’t been made for her, and she couldn’t take it from him. Even as he felt her presence dull in his soul, he knew he’d been too late to keep Lotor from noticing. 

It didn’t matter. He’d known that was a risk too, coming here and choosing to use blood. He’d just have to be fast, faster than Lotor could send forces to reclaim him. For that, being in the human compound might actually be a benefit. After all, it wasn’t like they’d go any easier on Lotor’s forces than him. 

He focused on the vat of quintessence again, trying to feel its quality. 

_Human._ He was sure of it. They were draining their own kind for energy. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. On the one hand, it meant they likely weren’t raping Kuron for it, but the act of taking from living people, from one’s _own_ people, was a—corruption. One he was far too familiar with. 

Kosmo suddenly snarled and bunched his muscles in a Flash, the only warning Keith got. 

Bullets sprayed across where Keith had been standing milliseconds ago. Heat licked up his spine as his muscles strained within his own Flash. He heard glass cracking and humans shouting. They’d shot through the door from fairly far away. That coupled with the brightness of the vat had kept him from noticing them. 

Keith’s guard was shouting at his approaching allies, “He’s a bullet dodger, running on blood, regular guns won't work!” Dammit, Keith hadn’t expected the guard to notice the buzz of quintessence on the Galra’s skin or to know what that meant. But the guard had been far smarter than Keith had given him credit for, if he had found a way to alert his comrades without Keith noticing. It was almost admirable. 

Kosmo darted to the side of the door, taking cover away from the gun fire. Meanwhile, Keith threw his knife with sick precision. The guard saw it coming, but with his senses dialed up to eleven, Keith had noticed the man’s muscles bunching in slow motion, had seen which way he would throw himself, and had corrected accordingly. 

The guard toppled over, the knife sticking out of his chest just as the group of soldiers made it to the door. Keith ignored the twinge of regret that lodged itself in his throat. After all, he had warned the human what would happen if he fought Keith. 

Keith saw the trap closing in as the soldiers formed a semicircle around the door. He couldn’t afford to be boxed in this room. But then there were more cracking noises, a ponderous groaning. Keith suddenly remembered the spray of bullets from earlier, and his heart clenched for an entirely different reason. The humans shouted again, backing away from the door. 

Keith barely had time to consider his options before he was overcome by the most exquisitely painful rush he’d experienced since his last and only time sacrificing to the Lion. 

The vat of quintessence had cracked open, spilling its contents out the door in tsunami-like rush. No sentient creature was meant to feel this, the touch of foreign souls multiplied by the hundreds, consuming, overwhelming. Awareness of mortality distilled down to a fine point, the tip of a blade, and it was slicing Keith open, leaving him flayed. Keith crashed to the floor and _screamed._ He was dying, except this was somehow worse than dying. He’d died before, drowned in nothingness, and this was the opposite of that, too much. It was too much. 

_Kuron._ He had to think about Kuron. Kuron, who was suffering right now, who had sacrificed everything. The man who had taught Keith to fight, who had taught him that the fight wasn’t over until it had been won, he was waiting for Keith, and Keith—Would. Not. Fall. Here. He refused. 

His limbs protested in agony as he drew himself up. The quintessence was blinding, but Keith had never needed his eyes. He took one step across the pool of swirling quintessence, then another. He withdrew the Luxite blade from the chest of the guard, then took two more stuttering steps. 

Kosmo lay whimpering on his side. With strength he hadn’t known he possessed, Keith bent and picked the wolf up by the scruff of his neck. He half led, half dragged the wolf out the door. The humans who had been directly hit by the quintessence lay dead, overwhelmed. As a species, they simply weren’t equipped to handle it. Even the ones who had escaped lay twitching, shivering, and shuddering just from the nearness of the uncontained presence. 

When he was finally far enough away to not be literally standing in the quintessence, Keith dropped the wolf and collapsed to his knees. Once, twice, three times he retched, gagging on the overblown sour taste of his own bile. Kosmo got to his feet first. The wolf nosed Keith plaintively, stopping to sniff the product of the Galra’s heaving. Keith sank his fingers into the coarse fur of the wolf’s back, steadying himself with the familiar texture. He leaned his weight on Kosmo, using the wolf’s body to haul himself up. 

Keith could hear more shouting, the thudding of footsteps, and the humming of vehicles. The smart thing to do would be to retreat, lick his wounds, think of another way in, and wait for the humans’ fervor to die down. But he didn’t just have the humans on his tail anymore. Lotor was coming, sure as the sunrise. 

And besides, Keith had never been very good at surrender. 

He squeezed the wolf’s fur and received a whuff in reply. Then they both broke into a run, headed for the main building just as the sound of multiple explosions rang out behind them. 

*~*~* 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos feed my black soul.


	3. He Who Never Learned to Surrender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance and crew carry out their plan.

*~*~* 

When he was thirteen, Keith got into a fist fight with a couple of older teenagers, mostly sons of important generals. Keith was an outcast, the forgotten pet of Lotor. He should have hidden from them, begged for mercy if retreat had become impossible, but as sworn about many times by an exacerbated Kuron, Keith just didn’t know how to surrender. He fought the enemies he couldn’t see, trying in vain to rely on his inborn sixth sense for movement to compensate for his lack of vision. 

The teenagers had that same sense though, plus eyes that worked, and so they tore Keith to pieces. 

When next he greeted Kuron, Keith sported a split lip, swollen eyes, and a thick gash down the side of his face. 

The older Galra didn’t say anything at first, but Keith sensed him clenching his jaw. Weakly, he joked, “Pretty soon I’ll match you, Kuron.” He realized it was the wrong thing to say as soon as it left his mouth by how Kuron reacted. Keith wasn’t— _good_ —with people and feelings, and he wasn’t quite sure what he’d done wrong, except that it clearly was, because Kuron immediately balled his fists, twisted around, and just walked away. 

Keith should have given in then, taken his words back even without knowing exactly what he had done to anger Kuron. Anything to keep the peace with the only person who gave a thought to him besides how useful a battery he’d one day be for one of the Lions. 

But Keith didn’t know how to surrender. And so he listened to Kuron walk away, and he felt his heart ache in a way that he had no idea how to process. 

However, later that night, Kuron came back. He crept quietly into Keith’s room while the younger Galra was asleep. Keith heard his footfalls and smelled that distinctive scent as the door creaked open. “I thought you’d left again,” Keith said once the other man was within a few feet of him. 

Kuron paused, and Keith rolled over, facing Kuron more out of courtesy and habit than his own need. “How did you know it was me?” Kuron’s tone was strangely brusque. 

Keith had the urge to cower, to quell beneath the older man’s wrath, but he made himself slowly sit up instead. “Your scent,” he replied honestly, “There’s no other like it.” 

“You’re the only one who’s ever said that. Seems you’ve developed strong senses to compensate for your eyes,” Kuron said after another pause. 

Keith shrugged. “Didn’t help me much.” 

“But it could. If someone trained you how to use it right.” When Keith didn’t respond, he kept talking, voice getting quicker, “You’re brimming with quintessence Keith. That power in your soul is your greatest strength. Just like I’ve learned to do with my arm, you could focus your energy. Make yourself stronger.” 

‘I don’t think Lotor needs me capable of fighting to have me bleed,” Keith replied shortly. It was the first time either of them had directly mentioned the fate that bound them, at least that Keith could remember, and it made the air heavy, thick with dangerous truths. 

Kuron swallowed, then said, “That’s the problem isn't it though? He can't let you be broken, not yet. I—I have permission, Keith.” 

Keith’s ears perked up despite himself. “Permission for what?” 

“To teach you.” 

*~*~* 

When Lance was sixteen, he got into a fist fight with a couple of Garrison cadets. He was known for his big mouth, and this wasn’t the first time, but it was the worst in terms of injuries. The other boys broke six of his fingers and dislocated his shoulder. 

Afterwards, when Lance was called into Commander Iverson’s office, he was expecting to be chewed out, to be told that the Garrison needed unity, that it was somehow his fault for getting beat up. Instead, what happened was Iverson pulled out a tablet playing the security feed of the courtyard they had been fighting in. He let it play, then paused the video. “Did you see it?” he asked Lance. 

Lance frowned suspiciously. He could feel this was some sort of trap, he just didn’t know what yet. “No,” he replied slowly. 

Iverson said, “Let me play it back more slowly.” Then he did. The video showed Lance rolling on top of one of the other cadets, swinging his arm back to go for a hit to the face, then stopping. “How about now?” 

“Look, sir, just tell me what I did,” Lance said. His arm was itchy in the sling, so he tried to scratch it, only to stop when he realized what he was doing. 

Iverson gave him a hard look. “Your piloting scores are mediocre, Cadet. Your physical—average. Shooting—completely uneven.” 

Lance protested, “I’m a great shot!” 

“Only against non-humanoid targets,” Iverson replied. “I was looking at your record earlier. Finally figured it out.” 

“I—,” Lance began. 

“I just don’t think you have the _nerves_ to succeed at the Garrison, Cadet.” 

Lance blinked, then said hotly, “With respect, sir, just last week I was in here because I’d replaced the statue of General Hockert with a live cow. You said I was too reckless. Now I don’t have nerves?” 

Iverson did not look amused. “I thought you had nothing to do with that?” he said pointedly. 

Lance gulped. “ _Allegedly_ replaced the statue with a live cow?” 

There was a pregnant pause, then, “Get out of my sight, Cadet,” Iverson roared. “And bring up those scores, or so help me, you’ll be back to grubbing for fish innards for a living.” 

Lance knew that was his cue to retreat. So he did, saluting the red faced man on his way out. Really, it wasn’t his fault that Kaltenecker made a far better mascot than General Hockert on a horse. 

*~*~* 

*~*He Who Never Learned to Surrender*~* 

*~*~* 

Lance was pretty sure his skin couldn’t get any more disgustingly slick with sweat if he tried. 

He and Hunk were jammed inside of a janitor’s closet with what had to be every type of cleaning supply on the planet. A sliver of light shone from under the door and with that fresh air, otherwise Lance was sure they would have suffocated. This space was just not meant to have two breathing, heat producing people inside of it for hours on end. 

“Dude, how long does it take to plant Mercap-whatever in the HVAC?” Lance whined to Hunk, accidently jabbing his elbow into the other man’s stomach as he restlessly squirmed. 

Hunk didn’t bother to answer, probably because this was the twelfth time Lance had asked a variation of that same question. 

“Huuunk,” Lance whined again. 

Rather than answering, Hunk sniffed. “Do you smell that?” 

Lance froze his squirming. He too took a deep breath, but all he could smell was nasty old sweat and bleach. “No,” he pouted, but then the alarm went off. Even in the closet, the alarm was earsplitting. “Jesus,” Lance complained, pressing his hands against his ears as tight as he could. 

Hunk mimicked him. “This is it,” he mouthed to Lance. The pilot nodded. The next few minutes seemed to take forever. They heard thundering footsteps and the Evac announcement cutting across the alarms. There were more footsteps and shouting. Lance and Hunk barely breathed. Eventually, everything grew silent again except for the alarms. 

“Come on,” Lance gestured to Hunk. “Let’s go.” 

“No wait,” Hunk grabbed Lance’s arm. “Slow down.” As they lightly tussled, there suddenly came the sound of someone jiggling the door handle, and they both froze. 

Lance let go of Hunk’s arm, ready to attack whoever was on the other side. But the door opened to reveal Pidge’s grim face. 

“Come on,” he said over the alarm, turning around and moving quickly down the empty corridor without waiting to see if they followed. Both Lance and Hunk scrambled to climb over piles of brooms and buckets, making a racket that would have been devastating if not for the noise of the alarm. In the hallway, the smell of Pidge’s chemical was nauseatingly inescapable. Lance held his nose pinched shut as he hurried to follow Pidge. 

The comm expert explained as he led them, “I hid in a ceiling panel in one of the service rooms until the Evac was complete. We need to hurry before the emergency repair crew is sent in.” 

There was a stairwell at the end of the corridor, and they took it all the way to the bottom, never once running into anyone else. So far the plan was working. The door at the bottom of the stairwell was locked with a key pad. Pidge plugged his tablet into the bottom port and began to do something that apparently required a lot of swearing and fast typing. Lance jittered his foot up and down as they waited. However, just as Pidge cheered and the door clicked open, there came a vague rumbling that shook the walls. 

Lance exchanged a glance with Hunk. Then all the lights went out, leaving them in near darkness. The only illumination came from the green glow of the tablet display. It barely lit Pidge’s face, casting it in a sickly color. The alarm stopped as well, making the situation that much eerier. 

Lance couldn’t help the little shriek he let out, automatically reaching out blindly for Hunk’s arm. He found it and clutched his friend. “Pidge, what the fuck?” he hissed. 

Before Pidge could answer, the emergency floor lights came on, lighting the stairwell back up. Thankfully, the alarm didn’t start again with the return of the lights. 

Pidge glanced down the tablet and swore with frustration, “It’s the main generator, not a software issue. System is completely down, which should be impossible unless someone literally blew it up.” Under his breath, he added words which Lance barely caught, but that sounded something like _, “Fucking idiot, can't even set off a fucking bomb.”_

As if to mock Pidge, they heard another distant rumble, made louder by the lack of alarm, and the floor once again vibrated slightly. The three exchanged a glance. Setting off the Mercaptan shouldn’t have actually caused any damage. That was literally half the point of the plan, which meant this was something else. An attack? A break in? Just who else would be breaking into the Garrison besides them? 

Staring at his crew’s uncertain faces, Lance made the decision for them. “Dudes, we stick to the plan. Whatever else is going on, hopefully it distracts them from us.” 

Pidge nodded, while Hunk muttered under his breath, “Yeah, but with our luck they’ve locked down the whole hanger bay because of this, and we can kiss stealing a ship goodbye.” 

Lance chose to ignore him. 

That brief argument over with, they treaded lightly down the eerily glowing hallways of the subbasements. At one harrowing point they were passed by a running guard, the first person they had seen since coming out of hiding. As the guard barreled down the hallway, they all tensed up, ready to talk or fight their way through. But the guard ignored them, not even glancing their way as he disappeared around the corner. 

Once they were alone again, Lance smirked at Hunk. “See?” 

Hunk just rolled his eyes. 

Ten minutes later, when they got to the sub-level labs, the doors were wide open, much to their surprise. Lance shot Pidge a look. The Comm expert frowned, and ran his fingers over the number pad next to the door. Then he glanced back at his tablet and narrowed his eyes. Thoughtfully, he finally explained, “The security breach is actually pretty serious. The power trip reset all the locking mechanisms connected to the generator. I suspect all the doors might be open.” 

“You’d think they’d design the system to avoid that,” Hunk said mildly. 

“They did,” replied Pidge. “The backup generator should have prevented this. But remember how long the backup lights took to come on, a good ten seconds. I’m not even sure what could have done that to the backup generator.” 

Lance made an executive decision that sitting around here discussing the why and how wasn’t helping them get any closer to the anti-viral cases. He pushed past Pidge and said, “Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth. Come on.” 

He’d never seen the sub-level labs before, but everyone knew they were there. The first room they came to was huge, a large open space crammed full of tables and machines that Lance had no name for. There were all kinds of levers, microscopes, rows of computers, and even tables with straps that were suspiciously human shaped. It seemed like a scientist’s paradise. “Which computer do you need access to?” Lance asked Pidge. 

Pidge had already walked up to one of the tables and the computers sitting on it. A quick glance showed that the computers seemed to be in the middle of their boot up sequence from where the power outage had shut them down. They had to be carrying a pretty heavy data load to be taking this long to boot back up; even Lance saw that. 

Pidge typed a couple of commands into the boot screen, then backed away. “Not here. We need to go further in.” 

Hunk frowned. “Just how many labs are down here?” 

“Enough,” replied Pidge. 

Lance started walking towards the back of the large room where there was another hallway leading further into the complex. “We’ve got to find the lab where they do biology experiments or whatever, right?” 

Pidge hesitated. “Yeah,” he finally said as they passed under the overhang and into the next hallway. “Exactly.” 

This new hallway had multiple doors on either side, each opening up into a much smaller lab. Lance shot a panicked look at Pidge, wondering if they were going to have to check them all, but the comm expert just shook his head. Finally, at the end of the hallway, they came to a red sign that read, “Quarantine Ahead: All Personnel Must Follow Decontamination Policies at All Times. No Exceptions.” 

“This is it,” whispered Pidge. Lance nodded. It made sense that viral experiments would be kept behind a quarantine door. 

Hunk, of course, had a different concern. “Uh, should we go in there though? I mean, we could fuck up a deadly experiment, or catch a super disease, or anything really.” Both Pidge and Lance just stared at him. “Or we could just waltz in. That’s a plan too, I guess.” Lance shook his head. Hunk might have a point, maybe, but it wasn’t like they had any idea what the decontamination policies were. And they had already committed. 

Like the others, this door wasn’t locked, but it was closed with a heavy bar. It took all of Pidge’s weight to push the bar up, at least until Hunk leaned forward to help. 

“I had that,” the comm expert muttered. Hunk just ignored him, pushing the heavy door open. The next room was small. The walls were lined with tiles and a couple of showerheads on the ceiling. At the other end was another heavy door. 

They exchanged glances, all of them aware that they didn’t exactly have time to fuck with showerheads that may or not be working what with the whole place on backup power. They’d just have to hope that that Hunk was wrong about the need for decontamination. Without having to say it, they walked single file together. Hunk had to once again raise the heavy bar across the door. Then they entered the next hallway, which turned out to be lined with more mini-labs. Like before, they ignored them, eventually coming to a much larger room behind an open set of double doors. 

The large room turned out to be a lab just like the one at the beginning of the sub-level lab complex. It was laid out in nearly exactly the same way with another double door at the other end. Though, if the other lab had been a scientist’s paradise, this place was actually heaven. It seemed to have even more science equipment and complex machines crammed inside. Pidge once again walked up to one of tables laden with a row of computers. These computers were further along in the boot process, a reminder that time was running out, but they seemed to have what Pidge needed, because the younger man sat himself down and began furiously typing. 

“I see some storage freezers at the back end here,” Hunk said to Lance, pointing towards the other end of the room. “I’m gonna look for our missing anti-viral cases.” 

Lance nodded distractedly. He walked over to one of the tables close to Pidge. This table was full of paper, no computers except for a small tablet. He looked closer and saw that the papers were actually some kind of schematic for what looked like a human arm. Strangely, he could see intricately drawn wires coming out of a port looking device in the bicep, mixing with veins and other biological features in the arm itself. The whole thing looked drawn straight out of a freaky cyborg horror movie. 

He frowned to himself as he moved on. He’d never seen anything close to that in real life. Was it some new prosthetic idea? He picked up the tablet next, watching as it responded to his touch by coming to life. The tablet was open on a video that had been paused near the beginning. His curiosity peaked, Lance hovered over the play button, then pressed his finger down. 

What began to play was not what he expected. It wasn’t some lab test or a news report or even someone’s porn. It was an old video, and one that Lance recognized. Everyone on the planet would have recognized it. 

The video was blurry, the person holding the camera jerking it up and down as chaos reigned around them. But Lance still recognized those colors, the blur of movement. He knew what was coming next, and sure enough, the camera steadied out as the holder backed up several steps to reveal two fighting men. One was a Galra, skin purple, muscles bulging out of his armor. He held no weapon. This particular Galra didn’t need one because he was the first and only Galra to be able to turn his arm into a living weapon with quintessence. The Galra’s arm glowed a livid, radioactive purple. The human fighting him had a sword, a plain looking thing in comparison, already stained red. The human man was big himself, nearly as tall as the Galra, and he battered against the otherworldly arm of his foe fearlessly. 

The Galra came into clearer view when there was a particularly vicious clash and they both sprang apart and paused to breathe. Though he was big and physically well built, the Galra looked sickly, his face drained of color. His panting had a visible wheezing quality and his arms trembled. In contrast, the human seemed invigorated, every movement showing controlled grace and power. 

The Galra’s arms shook harder, and then with a roar that morphed into a scream, the power bled away from his arm, its glow dimming until he stood there truly unarmed. The human walked a step forward, and the Galra responded with a single step back. From the angle of the camera, the viewer couldn’t really see the Galra’s face, but they could the human’s. His expression was a picture of poise and concentration. 

The Galra’s jaw moved up and down, and it was clear he was saying something. Every time he had seen this video, Lance had longed to know what words had passed between the two combatants. But the angle was all wrong. Whatever the Galra said, it caused the human’s eyes to widen in apparent shock. The human stilled, frowned like he was coming to a decision, and then he raised his sword. The Galra remained motionless. His jaw moved again, giving the human one last word. 

Then it was over. 

Takashi Shirogane drove his sword through the Galra’s arm, permanently removing the weapon that had terrorized so many of the Galra’s enemies. Then he stabbed the Galra through the heart. 

Hunk leaned over Lance’s shoulder, having apparently come back without Lance noticing. “Why would they be watching a video of the Battle of Kerberos in here?” 

Lance had a hard time tearing his eyes away from the video. Most versions of this video stopped at this point, and he could see why. No one wanted to see their triumphant hero fall to his knees, tears streaming down his face just at the moment of victory. 

“Because they lied about everything,” said Pidge. 

Lance swiveled to face his com expert. Pidge still stood at the computer table. He held a different tablet that was playing something more like what Lance would have expected to see here, grainy footage, obviously from some security camera mounted on a wall. It showed a cot inside a tiny cell-like room that was styled remarkably similarly to the one they were in, in that it was built from gray concrete blocks. Anyone would have recognized that room as somewhere within the Garrison. 

A man sat on the cot, his body obviously damaged and scarred, but when the man looked up at the camera as if he could feel their attention, Lance gasped out loud. Even with the footage as blurry as it was, he recognized that face. After all, he had just been watching a younger version of it slaughter the Champion of the Galra. 

“Why are they holding Lieutenant Shirogane like a prisoner?” asked Hunk as walked back over towards Pidge. Lance had no answer for him. 

“That’s something I would love to know,” Pidge replied darkly. “He’s the only prisoner they have here.” Pidge sounded strangely disappointed with that. 

“That guy was my hero,” Lance said with confused awe. “He’s the reason I tried to join the Garrison.” 

Lieutenant Shirogane had killed the Champion of the Galra in the Battle of Kerberos a little over a year ago. Everyone knew that, the footage having been reclaimed from the armor of a nearby soldier who’d been killed later that day. Shirogane had defeated the Champion, but he’d been standing nearly alone. The humans were losing the battle, and while the Galra had strange enough ideas about combat to let Shiro battle the Champion unmolested, they’d swarmed him afterwards, capturing and killing him in revenge. 

Takashi Shirogane was dead. 

Except that if this footage was real, he clearly wasn’t. 

Hunk squeezed his eyes shut. “It doesn’t matter. What’s important right now is the anti-viral. I can't find it anywhere in here. They might be storing it somewhere completely else.” 

“Shit,” swore Lance, his attention returning to their actual mission. 

Pidge had turned back to his computer, pulling out a tiny jump drive and shoving it in his pocket. Lance saw him flinch at Hunk’s words. A moment later, he said, “I’ve got what I needed from this computer. Look you guys, I have to tell you something—.” 

Pidge was suddenly cut off by the sound of gunfire. They all drew themselves up and exchanged wild glances. 

The noises echoed down the hallway, growing louder and louder until a line of fully outfitted Garrison soldiers trailed into the lab. Lance didn’t even have a chance to panic at their bad luck before Iverson was striding through the doorway. 

Of course they’d been caught by literally the worst possible person. _Because of course._

Iverson’s gaze swept from Lance to Hunk to Pidge, and then he stalked up towards Lance, who was the closest to the door. Lance instinctively retreated a step, but the back of his legs hit the table behind him, and he was stopped. 

Iverson withdrew a handgun from his side holster as he came up to Lance. 

The cargo pilot saw his life flash before his eyes, but he was unable to make a sound as Iverson shoved the gun under his chin. Lance’s brain stuttered on the feeling of cold metal pressed against his skin. Somewhere, Hunk called out in distress, “Lance!” But Iverson only had eyes for the man in front of him. 

“McClain, I’m going to give you one chance to tell me the truth,” Iverson said, face drawn in a harsh scowl, “If I think in any way that you’re lying to me, I’m going to blow your fucking head off right here. Do you understand me?” 

Lance was stuck on the discomfort of the gun pressed into his windpipe, and somehow failing to put the pieces together to form words. When he didn’t answer right away, Iverson jammed the gun even harder, and demanded, “I said, do you understand me?!” 

Lance finally gasped out, “Yes. Jesus. Yes.” 

His breathing was too shallow, making everything feel faint and distant. He’d known what they were doing was dangerous, that they were likely to be caught, but he’d never thought about guns or death threats. Life in prison maybe, but the Garrison didn’t kill humans as a policy. There were too few of them left. Even with the deadly virus in New Haven, the Garrison had given Lance the original shipment to take to the settlement without too much complaint. 

Outside, in the hallway, there came more gunshots and the radio emitted a wave of static and shouting. Iverson glanced back, and during that reprieve, Lance squeezed his eyes shut, taking a deep gasping breath. 

“Hold the line,” commanded Iverson, speaking to the men by the door. “I want everyone tag teaming short and long range capabilities. The fucker is high on blood which means he’ll likely _Flash_ past the gunfire, but we can still slow him down. Sub-hallway 2B is narrow enough to set off a pulse. Wait till he’s in the hallway itself and then set off as many as you can. I’d like to see him dodge that.” 

A chorus of “Sirs” rounded out, and with that, Iverson turned his attention back to Lance. 

Iverson tapped Lance with the gun, forcing him to open his eyes back up. “Remember, McClain. I’ll know if you’re lying,” Iverson said, his eyes boring into Lance’s. “Are you working with the Galra?” 

“What?” Lance didn’t understand. Which he promptly expressed, “I don't understand.” 

Iverson made a noise of frustration. “Did you help a Galra operative gain access to the Garrison approximately fifty-five minutes ago?” 

“Of course not. How the fuck would that help up?” Being accused of things by Iverson was actually pulling Lance out of his daze. Defending himself against Iverson’s bullshit happened to be something he was used to doing. 

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out, cargo pilot. I don’t think it’s coincidence that I find you and your merry men in the very lab that operative is here to gain access to. So you’re going to try again. What is your plan with the Galra operative?” 

“There’s no plan,” Lance insisted hotly. He decided there wasn’t really a point anymore to hiding what they were actually doing. “We’re here for the anti-viral, asshole. You know, the thing that Galra raiders forced us to drop in the desert. We’re not working with them. That’s insane.” 

“He’s telling the truth, sir,” Hunk interrupted desperately. Lance didn’t dare turn around to face him, not with the gun still pushed against his windpipe. Pidge remained silent. 

“Sir, the East Gate!” A soldier ran up to Iverson, holding a walkie talkie. He held it up as the person on the other side repeated their message. “ _Code Omega. I repeat Code Omega. A small Galra force wearing Lotor’s colors are attacking the East Gate. They have Quintessence powered weapons. I repeat, Code Omega.”_

Behind them, Pidge gasped and whispered, “No. That’s impossible. I—.” 

Iverson withdrew the gun from Lance abruptly, swearing. He took the walkie talkie and began shouting more orders. “Captain Walker, do you copy?” 

_“Copy,”_ came the staticky answer. 

“Start up the emergency sirens again. Follow the full assault protocol. Defend that gate with your life, Captain.” 

_“Sir.”_

Iverson turned back to Lance and his crew. “I don’t have time for you right now. Suffice to say that when we kill these intruders, and we will kill them, if I find out that you had anything to do with this, I will see you all hanged.” With that he turned around and began issuing more orders to the soldiers waiting by the hallway entrance. 

Both Hunk and Pidge took the opportunity to come stand next to Lance. Hunk’s hands were shaking as he said, “I don’t understand. We’re under attack by the Galra? How could they possibly know that we would start a false evacuation tonight? Unless—.” 

“A spy,” Lance confirmed, already seeing that train of logic. The idea must have terrified Pidge, because he gulped loudly, and looked so pale that he might have been mistaken for a corpse if not for his shallow breathing. 

The idea of a human working with Galra was ridiculous though. The Galra didn’t have money like humans did, and they didn’t believe in mercy, at least those under Zarkon’s rule. You couldn’t trade cooperation for your life; everyone knew that. So what could someone possibly gain by selling out their own species? 

*~*~* 

Humans had the worst sense of taste the universe had ever seen. Who built buildings that were just long mazes of cramped, suffocating concrete hallways? Who’d want to live that way, like rats in a tunnel? 

_Well, humans apparently._

Kosmo seemed about as unhappy as Keith to be trooping through the Garrison complex without a true direction. He knew they needed to head down, that anything worth hiding was in the sublevels. The quintessence of the earth had a different quality the further down you went, and the mark of human activity was distinct, distinct enough that Keith could see where the Garrison was built lower, but actually finding doors and stairways that corresponded to his vague senses was a lot more complicated than he had hoped. 

The resistance of the humans wasn’t exactly helping either. Hallways made bad places to dodge bullets, even with the _Flash_. Both he and the wolf were running far too hot from the constant Flashing. He’d already wasted his canteen by dumping the water straight over the wolf’s head. Kosmo had snarled at him in offended disgruntlement, but his panting had also calmed down. 

His only bit of luck was that all the doors had been open and unlocked so far. The only reason he could think of for something like that, was that either his contact had access to the Garrison system, fairly likely, but unlikely that the humans couldn’t fight a lone hacker. Or, that the energy from the spilled quintessence had shorted out the backup generator and destroyed some of the computer mechanism by sheer overload. Quintessence was known to have strange effects on computer systems and code. It was the only logical reason he could think for why the doors hadn’t been fixed yet. 

The main hallways had braille by the room numbers, and so he knew when he passed through a heavy double door and entered the hallway labeled Sublevel 1: Authorized Personnel Only that he’d made it to the sub-basements. _Finally._

They’d left a trail of bodies behind them, but Keith knew that some of the Garrison soldiers had guessed where he was going and had beaten him down here. He could see dull lights from living quintessence through the walls if he squinted. 

He and the wolf passed through some kind of large lab first. It smelled of blood and pain, and it made both of their hackles shoot up. Keith palmed his knife nervously the entire time they were in there, twisting and turning it nervously. He’d expected another force to catch up to them from behind, and was growing warier and warier the longer that didn’t happen. He could hear that the sirens had started up again from somewhere outside the main building. 

It didn’t help that Lotor had definitely noticed his stunt with the blood sacrifice and the vat of quintessence. Damn the Lion. The prince’s attention had become a dull press on his mind that was distracting at best, and potentially crippling if he gave in to it for even an instant. But Keith had a lot of practice ignoring Lotor’s pull. 

He entered another long hallway after passing through a containment room with heavy barred doors. The containment room’s doors been unlocked like all the others, but they weren’t the type of doors to slide open, the heavy bars keeping them closed despite the chaos in the computer system. 

He could see the glow of humans waiting in some kind of ambush in the next hallway. He couldn’t help but be mildly impressed. It was a good place for an ambush as the heavy bar on the door behind him would prevent easy retreat. Tactically, Keith should avoid this at all costs, but Kuron was at the other end of this hallway, and he couldn't let whatever these humans were cooking up keep him from his friend. He was prepared to flash the instant the ambush began. He expected bullets, maybe a machine gun, likely some kind of attempt to overwhelm him with sheer numbers. 

That wasn’t what happened though. It wasn’t bullets that came down the hallway or even an explosion. Either of those, he and the wolf could have outrun. Instead, Keith smelled the distinct ozone of electricity, felt the hairs of his arms stand straight up. He was already flashing forward, trying to outrun the electrical pulse. But though the shot was far slower than the bullets he continually dodged with ease, its area of effect was much larger, and the humans had fired multiple rounds. 

Keith dodged the first by running straight up the wall, but then he heard the wolf beginning to yelp, the start of the pulse’s crackle hitting its target, and that was enough to break his focus. He lost the concentration of energy in his limbs, and suddenly he was falling from where he’d been nearly on the ceiling. 

He literally felt his heart stop as the next pulse hit him dead center. He dropped onto the floor with a bone jarring thud. If he’d had time, the silence in his own body would have sent him into a panic spiral. However, the next pulse of electricity started his heart again before he could feel the effect of his blood stilling. It still hurt so fucking much as his body desperately clung to life. Keith couldn’t even scream, having lost all motor control to the electricity. 

Kosmo smelled like burned hair and flesh, and he wasn’t making noise anymore. _Oh gods,_ he wasn’t making _any_ noise anymore. Keith tried to force his eyes open, but he still couldn’t get his muscles to obey him. There was a gash on his own arm from where he must have scraped it tumbling down the wall. He could hear one of the humans moving and he knew they were coming to kill him, to put a bullet in his head for all the people he had killed just to get here. 

He’d come so fucking close. Kuron was at the end of this hallway, he could almost smell it. Why else would they have guessed this was where he was going? It didn't matter though, he was still going to die here, uselessly. 

But Keith had yet to learn how to surrender. 

The gash on his arm didn’t have the intention behind it that the prick to his finger had. Wide skin wounds were bad for sacrifice; they didn’t _pull_ enough to be effective. 

Still, he tried, imagining the sluggish bleeding as a sacrifice, trying with all of his might to believe it. He had to believe it, or this would never work. There was no room for fear, for the thought of the bullet that was about to be lodged in his brain. Death was nothing, he’d died before, but leaving Kuron here, failing Kuron, that was a wound to Keith’s soul that would never heal. That was worth losing all the blood he had, worth becoming a shell of a thing, and he believed that with all of his might. The smell of copper and pain—and it was so sluggish, so tiny, so weak. He could barely grasp it, could barely form the thread between the physical and what lay beyond. 

His muscles burned liquid hot. The Lion roared in his ear. This blood was hers, how dare he give it away to another, even himself? 

Keith staggered to his feet. The soldier that had been approaching him stopped and raised his gun, not pausing before trying to unload his rounds at Keith. But Keith had the power of a soul made physical at his disposal. The man died instantly, Keith’s knife slashing a wide gash across his neck before the soldier had even finished squeezing the trigger. 

With that done, Keith turned back to Kosmo. The wolf lay twitching on his side. Now that Keith focused, he could hear the wolf’s heartbeat. He hadn’t recognized it for that heart-stopping moment earlier because the rhythm was uneven and slow, but still, it pumped. Kosmo wasn’t dead, just unconscious and vulnerable. 

Keith knew he was in bad shape too. Two blood sacrifices, small las they were, left his mind numb and dull. His body was stretched to the max, his muscles overheated and torn. Flashing was dangerous to do continuously like this. No creature’s body could take that much raw power over an extended time. 

He could feel the humans in the room at the other end of the next hallway moving, getting into position. He couldn’t afford to get hit with another pulse like that. But he also couldn’t carry Kosmo and flash or fight. Nor could he wait here. But this was the only way out, and Kosmo looked near dead to the casual observer. 

Keith refused to think about what he would do if Kuron were also too weak to walk, how the hell he would get both of them out. He’d just have to find a way. Neither of his only two friends were getting left behind in this human hell hole. 

Without any further hesitation, Keith made his limbs obey him once more, despite their aching, jittery protest, and then with a silent dash, he raced forward to attack the humans at the end of the next hallway. 

*~*~* 

As Lance and the others stared at each other with wide eyes, suddenly there came a loud explosion, so loud that Lance thought his eardrums might be bursting. Lights flashed from the hallway, and something electrical pulsed out across the floor. It felt like the time Lance stuck his finger to an electrical fence just to see what would happen. His muscles trembled and spasmed against his will as he clutched at the table edge for support. 

Once he felt steady enough, Lance glanced up to see at least four soldiers plus Iverson crouched by the doorway, waiting in eerie silence. The radio crackled from the soldier who had been left behind to set off the pulses, “Galra and animal are down. Still alive, but spasming from the pulse. Orders, sir?” 

“Shoot the Galra first, then the animal,” spoke Iverson into the radio. They all waited silently for the sound of the gunshot. But it never came. Nor did anymore radio chatter. 

Iverson glanced back at Lance, then swore under his breath. 

“Don’t make me regret this,” he said slightly louder. Before Lance could ask just what the hell the Commander was talking about, a gun was flying through the air, and Lance had barely caught it. He stared at the hunk of metal in his hands without comprehension. Iverson turned back to the hallway and said, “That thing is here to kill every last one of us. I trust you remember how to use it?” 

Lance never got the chance to answer him because that was when everything went to shit. _Again._

Pidge suddenly screamed, high pitched, almost girlish. Everyone jerked around only to see that the attack hadn’t come from the front hallway where the Galra was, but behind them. The creature burst through the double doors at the back of the lab, moving so fast that it was a blur to Lance. 

Lance saw Pidge and Hunk diving out of the way, and he began to raise his gun. However, the real soldiers were much faster, already shooting at whatever it was that had come through the door. 

Iverson was shouting, “Stop! Hold your fire. Hold your fire!” 

Lance wasn’t sure how, but somehow all of the gunfire missed the stranger, and it came to a stop at the halfway point of the lab, still a good thirty feet away from them. As it stopped, Lance finally good his first good look at it. 

He nearly dropped his gun. “What the . . .?” he began, but he wasn’t sure how to finish the statement. 

The thing that stood before them was a verifiable Frankenstein, a monstrous creation. It (he?) was tall and well built, muscles bulging out of his thin and torn clothing. The sleeveless shirt he wore showed just how strange he really was. This creature had the body of a human, but the arm of a Galra. His right bicep, close to the shoulder, was circled with a dull, metal clamp-like thing, some kind of port. The veins under his skin that traveled out of the port, both towards his human shoulder and his Galra arm, glowed a sickly purple. Something had eaten into his face, leaving a ragged scar across the bridge of his nose. 

Worst of all though, was that underneath that livid scar, the face was one Lance dearly recognized. The blurry camera footage hadn’t really done it justice, hadn’t prepared him for what the reality of staring into the visage of his distant hero might actually be like. 

Because underneath that scar was the torn remnant of Takashi Shirogane’s face. Only this wasn’t Takashi Shirogane. It was barely human. The Frankenstein snarled at them all from where he had paused, like an animal confused by the inexplicability of human activity. He raised his Galra arm, and the arm _glowed_ , like a white hot poker. 

“Wash, Jackson, Smith, keep focused on the intruder. He ain’t gonna wait nicely on us to finish this drama. Lennard, with me.” Three of the soldiers went back to pointing down the hallway, and then Iverson took a single step towards the Shirogane monster. 

The Frankenstein growled low in his throat, raising the glowing arm menacingly. 

Iverson immediately stopped. He spoke soothingly. “Do you know where you are, Shiro? It’s okay. No one’s here to hurt you.” 

The monster just growled again. 

Lance thought the problem might be, besides the fact that someone had apparently thought it was a great idea to sew a Galra arm onto a human, was that Iverson didn’t exactly pull off soothing and unthreatening very well. 

He probably should have kept quiet, but keeping quiet when it was clearly the better option had never been one of Lance’s skills. “That cannot be Lieutenant Shirogane,” he said in a breathless sort of way. 

Iverson gritted his teeth. “Shut up, McClain.” 

Hunk repeated the sentiment, his voice far shriller than the commander’s. The Frankenstein, Shiro apparently, just kept staring at them like he wasn’t sure which of them he wanted to eat first. Lance felt the urge to suggest the soldier Iverson had called Lennard as the first dinner option, but he figured speaking up again would probably just draw Shirogane’s attention to him. 

In the tension of the faceoff, he almost forgotten that there was an entire different showdown going on at the other end of the room. But one of the soldier’s assigned to the hallway where the Galra intruder supposedly was coming from shouted, “Surrender now or we will shoot you.” At that, all of them, even Shirogane, raised their eyes and turned to watch the proceeding at the other end of the room. 

The Galra could be seen through the double doors at the start of the hallway. It stood too far away and too deeply in the shadows of the emergency lights for Lance to really get a good look at it, but even from here, he could see how it trembled and shook, like it was barely upright. Lance remembered them talking about how even high on blood, the Galra couldn’t dodge the pulses they were planning on sending down the hallway. Apparently, that plan had at least partially worked. 

The Galra widened its stance, turning the knife it held in its hand. Lance saw how the metal dully refracted the lights around it. It’s eyes almost glowed in the semi-darkness, like a nocturnal animal. 

“Surrender now!” the soldier repeated, his voice far steadier than Lance’s would have been in that situation. 

Still, the Galra refused to respond. The man didn’t give another warning. He began shooting down the hallway with his semi-automatic rifle. The sound of the bullets was deafening, but Lance could see how ineffective guns truly were against a species that had evolved the means for near supernatural speed. The Galra moved so quickly that Lance’s eyes couldn’t follow. He caught a glimpse of blurred movement on the left wall, like the alien was literally running horizontal, and again a few feet away from the rapidly shooting soldier. And then there was the worst sound Lance had ever heard, squelching, as the Galra’s knife sank into the soldier. 

The other men didn’t hesitate, two drawing their own swords and attacking the Galra in tandem, the other backing up with Iverson. “Focus, Cadet,” Iverson snarled at Lance, as he retreated to a better distance. Lance gulped and raised his own gun. He felt numb, like none of this was real, and he was going to wake up any second now. But the scene kept playing, sparks flying and metal clanging as the two soldiers battled the Galra. 

They worked well together, pairing off and attacking in tandem in a way that spoke to years of training. But the Galra was still somehow faster, keeping them mostly on the defensive. Lance could tell that if the Galra hadn’t already been injured and tired, they would have barely stood a chance. As it was, one of them got a lucky swipe across the Galra’s bicep. He howled in pain, stumbling back. 

That was almost the end of the battle right there. But then Iverson shouted a warning, and Lance remembered how they had been talking about an animal earlier. A four legged, furry blur was suddenly in the fray, mouth clamped on one of the man’s necks, blood spraying everywhere. That was all the help the Galra needed. He shoved his knife through the ribs of the other man, just as the wolf-like animal dropped his own prey. They staggered together, the Galra raising his weapon at the remaining humans, breath coming out in short, painful sounding huffs as the wolf bared its teeth and raised its ruff at them. 

As the Galra finally stood still, Lance got his first good look at the creature that had attacked the Garrison on the same night as Lance’s crew. 

It was the smallest Galra that Lance had ever seen. It was also the worst dressed, wrapped in what would be too generous to call rags. The Galra’s clothes had the bleached look of linen that had been left far too long in the sun, patched inexpertly in places and torn ragged in others. The scarf around its head was the only thing that had any color left, a dull crimson. The crimson head-wrap looked like it had been meant to hide its identity, but the wrap had at some point come undone so that only the lower half of the Galra’s jaw and the back of its head remained covered. 

Revealed beneath that scarf, the Galra was a study in contrasts. Its skin was pale, far paler than the Galra native to this desert area, a lovely shade of lilac. Yet its hair was darker than Lance had ever seen on a Galra before, nearly black, though with that still distinctive purple sheen. 

But it was the Galra’s eyes that stopped Lance’s heart dead. 

The Galra glared at them from beneath the loosened hood of its scarf, eyes narrowed in fierce hatred. Its eyes glowed brighter than anything natural ever could, not yellow or black like every other Galra, but purple, a deep royal purple, so bright the irises might be mistaken for radioactive. Lance had never seen anything like it before. Even growing up on an alien planet, the things around him still made sense. They still followed rules, even if you didn’t quite understand those rules, but this—this was impossible. 

It wasn’t looking at them. Lance followed its gaze all the way to Shirogane. The Frankenstein of Lance’s hero hadn’t moved the entire time that the rest of the fighting had been going on. His eyes were locked on the Galra’s, the tilt of his head almost confused. 

They made a strange sight. Lance and his crew were huddled near the computers, Shirogane and the Galra on the opposite sides of the lab, and then Iverson and his subordinate with their guns raised like they weren’t sure who to shoot first. Lance had almost forgotten he was even holding one himself. 

The Galra made a choked sound, one that the wolf creature responded to with a low growl. The Galra’s ears flicked around in a circle, and it took a deliberate inhale of air, nostrils flaring. Then it said brokenly, _“Kuron?”_

*~*~* 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and Kudos are love.


	4. The Man With the Stolen Arm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a showdown in the Garrison Basement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *I wanted to give the Galra an alien sounding language. Thus after a bit of thinking, I found a Dothraki translator and then fumbled around with the words, adding stuff here and there. So in this fic, Galra speak a bastardized, nonsense version of a fake language. You're welcome.

*~*~* 

“Never forget this,” Kuron had said, his voice choked with pain, the last and only command he had ever given Keith. “True power requires sacrifice. And true sacrifice requires blood.” Then in the dim, claustrophobic light of cockpit, the Lion had come to life around them. It shouldn’t have been possible. The older Galra belonged to the Black Lion, not the Red, but the Red didn’t seem to care about that. She swept her way through both of them, the animal violence of her overwhelming. At her mental touch, Keith collapsed, screaming. He bit through his lips and choked on his own blood. He tried to center himself. But before he managed, hands grasped his elbow, hauling him up. 

Shaking, Keith was unable to do more than hang limply from Kuron’s grip. He’d never felt anything like this before, magma in his veins, the presence of the Lion expanding around him until she filled every crevasse of his soul, until he drowned in her. 

Kuron, however, seemed as unaffected by the Red as Keith was overwhelmed. He dragged Keith to the pilot chair and unceremoniously shoved the younger Galra into it. Then he leaned over and strapped Keith in, binding his arms and shoulders. Keith hadn’t even known that the Lion’s pilot chair had straps for that. 

A strange pressure was forming in the air, like the world was squeezing together. There came a low humming, one Keith recognized, and one that finally told him what Kuron was doing. 

_A wormhole._

It took incredible power to operate a wormhole, power that no one person or even group of people could amass without destroying themselves. It was why the Lions were so valuable. They could greatly expand a person’s blood sacrifice, especially when all five of them were used together. Except that all five of the Lions had not been together since the days of Alfor. The Galra only had the Red and the Black, and they alone could not form a wormhole without taking so much power from their users that they destroyed them. 

Kuron had to know that. He had to know that he couldn’t feed the Red nearly enough quintessence to successfully send them anywhere. He wasn’t her bonded, which meant that she was even less efficient at taking quintessence from him. And an improperly created wormhole was not only dangerous to the one feeding it; It did strange things to space time, spitting a person out years into the future or miles from their intended destination. Or it just tore them to pieces and tossed the leftovers out into the cosmos. 

Keith finally found his voice again. “Kuron, stop this!” 

Kuron did not even glance back. He was doing something to the controls, seemingly setting a destination. Keith struggled feebly against his bonds until the older man finally turned back to him. Keith froze and stared helplessly at his friend. Already there was an uncomfortably empty quality to Kuron’s eyes that Keith could sense even if he couldn’t truly see. Kuron’s soul degrading away. 

Then Kuron turned away from Keith. The older Galra left Keith strapped to the pilot’s chair. Keith howled and screamed. He called down to Kuron as the other man exited the Lion, demanding that he return. But Kuron did not so much as twitch in response. When Keith could no longer hear Kuron’s footsteps, he ranted at the Lion instead, insisting that she release him, that she stop this. If he were truly her master as Kuron had suggested, then she should obey him. 

But she did not. 

The world squeezed tighter and tighter, until Keith wasn’t able to get his lungs to contract air. He gagged with a new, different desperation. The Lion suddenly jolted, gears grinding and moving as she gathered her metal haunches underneath herself. 

Then she leapt. 

The Lion whirred around him, motors humming and metal shifting as the world squeezed together. Suddenly, Keith could not feel the bars that strapped him to the chair. He couldn’t feel the chair at all. The scent of Kuron’s blood, the tang of quintessence, all gone as if they had never been there. Smells shouldn’t just suddenly disappear. They always faded away, dispersing and spreading. But as Keith grew more panicked, he realized that he could smell nothing at all, not the room around him, not even his own sweat and skin. 

He tried to scream, to draw air into his lungs, but there was nothing to draw air into. He couldn't feel his own body, didn’t have a single muscle to twitch and everything was silent, so silent, not even the Lion’s ambient noises, not even his own heartbeat. And then Keith realized that this was death, because it was endless, endless nothingness, nothingness so vast and absolute that it was incomprehensible. 

How could Kuron have done this to him? Even Kuron had not been strong enough to feed a wormhole with just one Lion. Real power might come from sacrifice, but there was no single sacrifice big enough to break the laws of nature themselves. 

“I’m going to set you free,” Kuron had said. 

_You lied to me, Kuron. This isn't freedom._

_All you did was leave me behind._

*~*~* 

When Lance had still been in the Garrison program, he had hated having to sit through class. As a child, he had spent his free time racing with his cousins down alleyways and playing soccer in the streets, not studying. With so few humans left on the planet, all people, regardless of age, were expected to work. So when he hadn’t been goofing off, he’d been working the fish packing lines at the docks with his older brothers. School only happened in the summer, when it was too hot outside to do anything else, and the fish boiled alive in the ocean. 

But the Garrison had been nothing but training, training, and more training. Sitting in stiff backed seats and staring at a blackboard. Learning protocols and salutes. Learning how to obey. Lance had wanted desperately to escape the fish packing lines and the smell of guts on his hands. He’d wanted to prove himself, to be a hero like the famous Lieutenant Shirogane. 

One of the last classroom lessons he ever sat through had been on Galran culture. Know thy enemy and all that. 

“The practice of ritualized scarring and blood-letting seems to have grown out of ancient primitive religious beliefs,” said the teacher, a frail looking woman, her liver-spotted hands always trembling. “Many of you only know about the Galra’s belief that they can control machinery through this practice, most famously of course, being the Black Lion of Voltron. Of course, the entire thing is delusional dribble. Still, we must understand them if we are ever going to secure our place on this planet.” 

Someone near the front interrupted, “But they can, can't they? I mean, that’s how the Black Lion works. That’s how the Alteans created the wormhole to Earth in the first place.” 

The teacher scoffed. “Just because we were unfamiliar with Quintessence before coming here, doesn’t mean we must also adopt every superstitiously nonsense idea that might have grown up around it. The Galra also believe that through ritualized bloodletting they can connect minds across great distances and share physical strength with each other. It’s pure nonsense.” 

The student simply shrugged, interest having been lost about halfway through the speech. 

“The fundamental truth is that though we might try to understand them, whether they be Galra, Altean, or Balmeran, the natives of this planet aren’t like us,” their teacher said more firmly. “Never forget that.” She paced in front of the class while Lance idly built a paper airplane from his sparse notes. “Especially the Galra. They don’t see life and death or morality in the same way as humans. They don’t believe in mercy, and they want nothing more than to wipe what’s left of us off of the face of this planet—Lance, do _not_ tell me that that is a paper airplane in your hand.” 

Lance raised his head, suddenly realizing that every eye in the room rested on him. “It’s not a paper airplane in my hand?” 

“To Iverson,” she hissed. “Out. Now.” 

*~*~* 

*~*The Man with the Stolen Arm*~* 

*~*~* 

Keith trembled at he stared at the creature he had traveled so far to find. He had known that humans were cruel, heartless parasites, but this was an—abomination. Because the thing that stood before him was not Kuron. It wasn’t even Galran. 

No, the thing growling in the back of its throat was, at first glance, a human male. It smelled of accumulated sweat, dirt, and excrement; the rank odor of a living creature trapped for too long in a small space, almost sickly in its pure concentration. Someone else’s blood overlaid the bitter scent, telling Keith that the thing had been through some sort of recent violence and won. But most damningly, Keith’s still active quintessence-fueled vision showed him that this human body had been blood-scarred, quintessence converted into energy. The scars themselves were mostly faint and weak, nothing like the painful brightness of the sacrifice Kuron had made. There was only one place on the creature where they were different, where the scars shone bright and strong. The sight made Keith sick. __

He’d know that pattern of scars anywhere, having memorized them like a prayer. 

They had taken Kuron’s arm. 

_They had taken his arm._ Not enough that Kuron had nearly killed himself and destroyed what was left of his soul to send Keith and the Red through a wormhole to freedom from Zarkon and Lotor. Not enough that he’d gone to the next battlefield degraded from that sacrifice. Bad enough that he’d been cut down there, that he’d died in service to Zarkon, fighting a war he hated. 

They took his arm. Desecrated him. 

_“Kuron.”_

But this could not be. Keith had felt him. He’d _felt_ him, goddammit. Kuron was here in this facility somewhere, the real Kuron, not this mockery. 

But he wasn’t. Keith’s vision told him that. The only sentient lifeforms down here were the five humans, Kosmo, and this abomination. 

Keith shakily drew on his English. “Where is he?” he demanded with a choke. “Where is he?!” He pointed his blade first at the older humans, then at the younger ones as one by one, they refused to answer him. 

The thing growled louder. It had been standing still, observing them, but clearly it had run out of patience. The abomination took a single step forward and shook its head as if to clear its thoughts. Keith desperately cast his senses wider, ears swiveling and nostrils flaring. He had to be missing something. _He had to._

One of the older soldiers spoke up as the abomination took another solitary step forward. Keith tensed further, not sure whether to point his knife at the abomination or the speaking soldier. “You’ve hit a dead end, Galra. Give up now or die.” 

Keith’s mind buzzed. “Where is Kuron?” he demanded louder. 

The soldier denied him. “I don’t know anyone by that name.” 

The abomination was staring at Keith as he argued with the other humans. He could feel the thing’s eyes like a brand. It worked its mouth up and down, grinding its teeth, and then it breathed out a small sound. Was it actually trying to speak? Keith wanted to cry. The truth overwhelmed him. He was going to die down here. He didn’t have the strength to fight his way back to the surface. But if he was going to die here, then the least he could do was put Kuron to rest. 

_Is this truly all that’s left of you?_

Keith stared back at the abomination. _An arm._ Just an arm. 

After Keith had come out of the wormhole, a year later rather than the instantaneous transportation the wormhole was supposed to provide, a year spent in darkness and silence, he’d found the Blade of Marmora and taken shelter with them. They had shown him (as much as Keith could be shown anything) the video of Kuron dying. Kuron had been felled by humans while Keith had been trapped in the nothingness of the astral plane, unable to help him. Keith had mourned then, experiencing true loss for the first time. He hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye, not really. 

So when the dreams had started, when he’d first begun to suspect that Kuron was actually alive, the Blade members had been understanding at first. Grief could be such a powerful thing. But the longer Keith refused to believe in his only friend’s demise, the less genial they had become, until the day had arrived when he’d left them. He could still remember how Kolivan had gripped him by the shoulder. 

“This is not right,” Kolivan had lectured. “Your connection to the Red Lion and Lotor could be the key to gaining the upper hand against the Empire. And you throw it all away for a childish whim.” 

“He’s alive,” Keith had insisted through gritted teeth. 

Kolivan had not been sympathetic. “It doesn’t matter,” he’d replied harshly. “Even if he were, which he is not, your place would still be here, where you can be useful.” 

Keith hadn’t answered him, instead turning to leave. But right before he was almost out of earshot, Kolivan had said with a sigh, “If you truly must go chasing ghosts, I will send you aid, so that you might have a fighting chance to come back to us.” 

Keith had nodded once and then left. 

And now, he stared at a creature that was not Kuron, and he knew that Kolivan had been right. If Kuron were down here, Keith’s senses would have shown him that. And if they were hiding him somewhere else, why would Keith’s dreams have lead him here? Why to the man’s arm and not his soul? 

Because his arm was all that was left. 

Keith’s voice dropped down to a choked rasp. He pointed at the abomination. “That doesn’t belong to you.” 

The abomination twitched, then raised the stolen arm questioningly, like it was seeing the limb for the first time. So it understood speech. He wasn’t sure if that made it more or less of a violation, that the humans had grafted his friend’s arm onto something could understand the nature of what it was. 

The soldier interrupted, “This is your last chance. Give up now, and you won't be further harmed. Resist, and we will kill you.” 

Keith laughed, a low and broken sound. Across from him, the abomination jerked if it were startled by the noise. “So you tear my body apart like you did Kuron’s? Give my eyes to some hapless human, perhaps?” He laughed again hysterically. His grip on the knife tightened as he gathered his focus to form his words, knowing they could easily be his last. He spat, “You threaten me with death like death is the worst thing you could imagine.” His eyes burned bright as he directly faced the soldiers, momentarily ignoring the abomination. “But I’ve seen death, and it doesn’t frighten me. Would you like to know what awaits you on the other side?” 

The human still did not answer, instead raising his gun higher. _The fool._

Keith focused all of his will, all of his hatred. It was hopeless, but he’d been damned if he laid down here and gave in to these parasitic murderers. He settled his free hand back down onto Kosmo’s ruff. The humans tensed up at his motion, but they still didn’t shoot, clearly too wary to be the first to attack. That was their folly, because through a squeeze of his palm, he directed the wolf with a language that belonged to them alone. Keith felt a single moment of regret that he had dragged the wolf into this mess, before he put it aside. Kosmo had made his choice, just as Keith had. 

“There’s nothing,” Keith finally said, “Absolutely nothing waiting for you.” 

“That’s enough!” the soldier impatiently exclaimed as he steadied his gun, finger on the trigger. But Kosmo was already in motion. The massive creature launched himself up, bounding across the slick tiled floor. Keith did not wait for him. Either Kosmo would succeed or he wouldn’t. Keith had his own target. 

He kept his body low, darting forward towards the abomination while Kosmo attacked the two soldiers. He’d intended to slide up into his target’s guard, kneeing him in the groin as he went. Humans were slow, their bodies not built for combat like a Galra’s. But somehow, as if it had anticipated Keith’s movement, the abomination was already twisting out of the way. _Fast, too fast._ Keith’s jab went past his opponent. He too began to turn, knowing he had to get the knife between them. 

And then the impossible happened. Keith smelled it, felt the tingle crawl up his arm. A bright, silver light flashed in his vision, nearly stunning him, and then his arm was caught by the abomination, gripped and pulled tight. _Trapped._

He didn’t have time to fight back. The abomination was that swift. One moment Keith was in a side stance and the next, he had crumpled against a wall of muscle. Then he burned. The pain was indescribable. Keith shrieked and clawed at the creature, his knife dropping out of his spasming fingers. The creature ignored his futile attempts at escape, his grip on Keith’s arm almost unnaturally strong as he lifted the Galra up by the bicep with one glowing hand. 

Keith had seen that arm in action before. He’d seen it melt through metal, burn away flesh down to the bone. He’d even once, in a bout of self-destructive curiosity, tried to touch it while Kuron held it activated. 

He had a memory of Kuron snarling at him, jerking his arm away, “Careful! I could have hurt you, Keith!” 

But Keith had never believed him, not really. Not even after Kuron had strapped him to the Red Lion’s pilot chair and left him there. Not even then, had he truly believed that Kuron could ever harm him. But this was Kuron’s arm that was burning a hole in his flesh. Wielded by an abomination perhaps, but still Kuron’s flesh and scars. Somewhere under the rank human sweat, still Kuron’s scent. Desert heat and ozone. _Power._

The abomination raised him higher until they were eye to eye. For half a second he stared into Keith’s practically sightless eyes. Then, with a great heave, the abomination threw Keith to the side. Keith rolled like a ragdoll, the accumulation of all of his injuries leaving his reflexes non-existent. 

It was too much. Keith could smell his own flesh cooking, how it mixed with already congealed blood. He couldn’t so much as twitch his ears. His body had finally failed where his conviction would not. 

“Kuron,” he gasped out a final time as ringing edged his hearing. _“Please.”_

But Kuron was dead, and he wasn’t coming back. 

*~*~* 

Almost in slow motion, Lance watched how the Galra’s hand reached toward the wolf’s ruff, fingers curling there. Thought he was too far away for it to be real, Lance could practically see the minute detail of the Galra’s knuckles stretching taut, muscles tightening, paleness over bones. 

“Nothing,” the Galra finally said, answering his earlier question himself, “There’s absolutely nothing waiting for you.” 

_That’s someone who’s saying goodbye_ , Lance thought. He didn’t have space for any further contemplation, however, because then the Galra exploded into motion, launching himself at Shirogane at the same time that the wolf rushed Iverson and his comrade. Pidge shrieked, pushing closer into Lance’s side, while Hunk’s grip on Lance’s shoulder tightened even further. Lance himself couldn’t seem to move a muscle from where he was crouched by the desk, couldn’t so much as take in a breath. 

Thanks to Iverson, Lance had a gun too, and he was trained in how to use it. He should do something. _Help,_ somehow. But in the time that it took him to have that thought, the wolf had already barreled over Iverson, claws and teeth tearing into the commander. The other soldier was shouting, waving his gun, obviously afraid to shoot and hit Iverson by mistake. 

The Galra had less success than his wolf. Lance twisted back around and caught a glimpse of the Galra moving inhumanly fast, but then in the next moment, the Galra was hanging by his forearm in Shirogane’s grip. Shirogane’s Frankenstein arm glowed a sickly, radioactive looking purple (The same purple as the Galra’s eyes, Lance would later realize) and almost instantly, even from the other side of the room, Lance could smell burning flesh. 

The Galra howled, the sound torn from him, his face scrunched up in agony. 

At the same time, the wolf shrieked, creating as macabre chorus with his master. Lance jerked back around to see that somehow Iverson had managed to reverse his own position. The wolf lay sprawled and bleeding next to Iverson’s last remaining subordinate, who’s throat had been visibly and gruesomely torn away. _One more dead human._

Iverson himself looked like he had walked through a meat grinder. He bled freely from a bite on his shoulder, and the front of his uniform was in shreds. But even injured and panting, the man held his gun high, his attention already moved on to the next threat. He limped forward, calling out to the Frankenstein, “Lieutenant Shirogane, stand down.” 

Shirogane didn’t seem to care for anything Iverson had to say. Though his Galran hand had stopped glowing, he still stalked forward to where he had thrown his opponent while Lance had been focused on Iverson. Bending down, he hauled the Galra up by the scruff of his shirt. The Galra, meanwhile, hung limp as a doll, clearly passed out. 

“Lieutenant Shirogane, that was an order!” Iverson repeated, his injury straining his voice. “Don’t make me put you down too.” 

Shirogane frowned at the limp Galra, shook him, and then, of all things, sniffed him. He made a startled sounding noise and dropped the Galra as unceremoniously as he had picked him up. Straightening his stance, Shirogane cocked his head in confusion once more. He faced the humans, but couldn’t seem to make up his mind on whether he wanted to approach them or stay right where he was. 

Lance couldn't help but wonder how the hell they were supposed to escape from this nightmare. The last radio message Iverson had gotten had been about Galra attacking the front gate. If one Galra acting on his own could do this much damage, how were they supposed to win against a whole hoard of them? 

Then again, Shirogane seemed to have defeated this Galra so easily that it was terrifying in its own right. ****

Iverson kicked at the wolf to make sure it was as still as its companion, then glanced back at the three huddled teens. Lance was painfully aware that he and his crew had not participated in any of the events from the previous ten minutes, that they had not aided their fellow humans in any way. The borrowed gun sat heavily in his hand. ****

“That’s the station where they’ve been studying Lieutenant Shirogane’s arm, ain’t it?” Iverson demanded with a growl and a quick point of his finger. When they didn't reply fast enough, he added, “McClain?” 

It was Hunk who answered. “Uh, I think so. There are schematics for an arm here.” The larger boy stood up, his gaze wavering back and forth between Shirogane and Iverson warily. 

Shirogane appeared content to defensively wait on the others to make their move, his eyes glued to Iverson. He still hadn’t spoken a single word, and Lance wondered if he was capable of it at all. There was a stillness to him, a stillness that Lance now knew was cover for a deeper violence. He still couldn’t believe how fast Shirogane had taken that Galra out. 

Iverson clutched at his shoulder. “In one of the drawers, there should be handcuffs. Heavy, about two-point-five inches long and half an inch thick each.” 

Hunk rummaged as both Pidge and Lance stood. Lance palmed the gun, testing the weight out of some half remembered habit. 

It didn’t take the engineer long to find the cuffs. They were heavy and unwieldy looking, broad enough that they would cover a wide portion of their victim’s forearm. Some type of clear jewel or crystal was inlaid in the meat of each cuff. They weren’t connected to each other by anything, no chain or rope. Lance wondered how they were supposed to work. They didn’t exactly look human made. 

Hunk held them up, “These?” 

Iverson barely took his eyes off of his staring contest with Shirogane to confirm for them. “Yes. Exactly. Now, Gunderson, you are going to walk up the Lieutenant and shackle him.” 

Both Lance and Hunk cried out at the same time. 

“Excuse me?” 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” 

“How about we not go near the non-verbal guy with the with the glowing arm of death.” 

Pidge just bit his lip, but didn’t otherwise move. Shirogane balked at the commotion and raised the arm of death in question. It came to life for maybe half a second as he considered the three teens, before he let it fall again. He growled and took a single step towards them. They all froze. 

Iverson spoke though gritted teeth. “Yes, he’s unstable. Violent—” 

Lance couldn't help but interrupt, even knowing that it would keep said unstable experiment’s attention on them. “All the more reason _not_ to go near him _._ ” 

Iverson’s voice grew harsher as Shirogane’s eyes narrowed in animal suspicion. “— _However_ , Lieutenant Shirogane has always refused to attack children, even in this state.” Lance wondered where Iverson could possibly have learned that. “Gunderson, you’re the smallest of us here. You need to shackle him before either that Galra wakes up or Shirogane finally decides he’d rather be topside. I won't have him attacking civilians in the middle of this crisis.” 

“Pidge _is_ a civilian,” Lance reminded him. 

“We could just let him finish off the Galra. I would be okay with that,” said Hunk, though his voice didn’t hold any real conviction. Hunk was the last person who’d truly consider watching wanton murder, even of a Galra. 

The commander risked another glance back at them, and there was something oddly uncertain in his eyes. But then it cleared, and his attention returned to Shirogane. “Gunderson, move.” 

Pidge met Lance’s eyes. The comm expert had been oddly silent for most of this argument. Hunk, meanwhile, interrupted, “Iverson, sir, no offense, but you’ve lost your mind. Probably from all the blood loss. You need medical attention. Let’s just leave and get out of here.” 

Without another pause, Iverson swung his own gun around, even as he kept his eyes on Shirogane. All three of the teens recoiled, Hunk gulping down his words. “I don’t think I made myself clear,” Iverson ordered coldly, “Put the shackles on Shirogane, or I will shoot you down like the traitors you are.” 

As he stared down the shining barrel of Iverson’s gun, Lance found himself once again reduced to immobile staring, his braining struggling to catalogue the sight before him. Iverson was threatening to kill them. _Again._ Not because they were dangerous, but because they were refusing to cooperate. The extremity of that baffled him. _We’re human beings_ , he wanted to shout. Not Galra to be ruthlessly mowed down. 

Oddly, that thought brought to Lance’s mind an image of the Galra curling his fingers through the wolf’s ruff, the light lilac of knuckles stretching over bone. It was like his brain had taken a snapshot of that moment and attached a significance to it that Lance didn’t quite understand yet. 

Pidge took the shackles from Hunk’s shaking hands. 

“ _Pidge,_ ” Hunk rasped, but he didn’t stop his friend. 

Lance finally found his voice, turning to grab Pidge’s shoulder. “Pidge wait!” Shirogane raised both fists at Lance’s words, and everyone froze their movement once more. Iverson glared his displeasure. Lance gulped, adding in a quieter, softer tone, “Let me do it.” It wasn’t like Lance had any desire to go near the giant Frankenstein of glowing death either. But he was the captain, not Pidge. 

Pidge, however, surprised Lance. “No,” the comm expert replied, “If it has to be done, then I’ll do it. Iverson’s right about one thing; Shiro would never hurt me.” 

Lance jolted at Pidge’s words. It was the way he had said Shiro. Not Lieutenant Shirogane or Shirogane, but _Shiro_. The name was intimate. _Familiar._ Pidge shot Iverson a single hateful glance, before turning his attention back to Shirogane. He started walking forward, brushing past Lance and Hunk, his steps unhurried, almost casual. Though when he spoke again, all semblance of easiness was lost. 

“What happened to you, Shiro?” asked Pidge. 

Shirogane blinked at the young teenager. He didn’t move until Pidge was nearly within arm’s length. Then, with a defensive growl, he activated the glowing heat of the Galran arm, warning Pidge back. The comm expert jerked to a stop, the shackles shaking against each other with a tinkling little rattle. 

_“Shiro,”_ Pidge repeated. 

Lance gripped Hunk’s arm as he watched, torn between wanting to rush forward and not wanting to set Shirogane off. Why the hell had he let Pidge do this? Iverson wouldn’t have really shot them. He’d just been counting on their fear to keep them in line. “He’s going to kill him,” Lance moaned at he clutched his friend. 

Hunk, however, had a different opinion. “I don’t think so,” he breathed out, so quiet Lance almost didn’t catch it. “Look.” 

Pidge had raised the hand that wasn’t holding the shackles, his palm flat, and Shirogane was looking at the proffered appendage warily. 

Lance risked a glance at Iverson. The commander stood as tense as them, lips invisible in his frown. 

“Matt?” 

It was the first word that had come out of the Frankenstein’s mouth, his voice rough and raspy with disuse. Slowly the glow faded from his Galran arm. 

Pidge choked. His hand clenched tight before opening again. “I am so, so sorry, Shiro,” he murmured. He reached up, tiny fingers closing over Shirogane’s much larger wrist. Without hesitation, he cinched the shackle shut over one wrist, then the other. 

Shirogane stared at his suddenly bound hands, shook them, then howled, his expression descending into pure rage. His arm activated again as Pidge began to scramble backwards. 

At the same time, Lance found himself darting forward without any direct input from his brain, like the strings in his muscles had finally been cut loose. He raised his gun. Steady—eyesight down the barrel—compensate for the swinging motion of his limbs—hand braced for the kickback— 

Shirogane suddenly crumbled. It hadn’t been any doing of Lance’s. Instead, the shackles were crackling with electricity, Shirogane’s limbs jerking back and forth. It went on for an impossibly long five seconds, all his muscles spasming in a grotesque frenzy. Then it stopped. His body lay limp on the floor, a mirror to the fallen Galra. 

Lance almost fell over as he reeled to a stop. His lungs burned, and he struggled to catch his panicked breath. Hunk, however, rushed past him, nearly barreling into Pidge. “Oh my God, are you okay?” 

Pidge shook, unable to coherently answer, and Hunk just held him, rubbing soothing circles into the younger man’s back. 

Lance had never hated another person as much as he did Iverson in that moment. He faced the man squarely. “Are we done here?” he asked, his tone making it anything but a question. 

“No,” Iverson spat. He was shaking harder than before, uniform growing heavier with blood. If Lance hadn’t been so angry with him, he might have been impressed with the willpower of his former commander. 

“You three are going to put them all in the cells. Then you’re done.” 

“How about no,” Lance retorted, mimicking Iverson. “Go to hell, man.” 

_Bam._

The shot echoed in the large room. It came so close to Lance that he felt the wind as it passed and his ears rang. “I don’t have time for your traitorous shit, McClain. I am your commanding officer and you will obey me. You grab the Galra. He’s the lighter of the two. Gunderson you drag the animal onto that cart over there. If it lives, we can use it against the Galra. Garrett, you’re taking Shirogane.” 

Lance trembled, his ears still ringing as he looked for any ounce of mercy in the commander’s expression. He found none. “We won't forget this,” Lance threatened, feeling his impotence as heavy weight in his stomach. 

“Good.” 

Lance had no desire to approach the Galra. But Pidge and Hunk were already reluctantly working together to lift the wolf onto a cart that had indeed been sitting next to some of the random lab equipment, so he hurried past them. 

“This is insane,” Hunk muttered. 

“Tell me about it,” Lance replied as he stared down at the fallen Galra. 

The Galra was a total mess. He bled red, just like a human, and he was drenched in it. A wide scrape ran down his right arm, like a particularly gruesome rug-burn, and Shirogane had turned the meat of his bicep into an oozing hand print. The Galra had all kinds of other minor scrapes and bruises, but Lance couldn’t take his eyes off of what was essentially a brand. The Galra’s eyes were closed, and he was doing that harsh, rattling breathing of someone barely clinging to life, let alone consciousness, yet Lance still hesitated to touch him. It felt like crossing some line. 

“Move it, McClain.” 

Lance grunted in protest, though he did finally obey, crouching down to position the Galra so he could lift him in a fireman’s carry. Lance almost expected the Galra to leap up when he finally touched him, to have been just faking his weakness the whole time, but the Galra didn’t so much as flinch. Nor did his skin feel any different than skin was supposed to feel. 

He also was heavy, a lot heavier than he looked. Lance plodded along after Pidge and Hunk, Iverson and his gun just a few steps behind them. They all stayed silent, Lance mostly because it was taking all of his strength and concentration to carry what felt like eight-hundred pounds of miniature Galra. Like seriously, what did this thing eat? Behind the double doors that Shirogane had originally come through, sat a row of cells. 

“Put Shirogane in A2 and the Galra in A3. A4 is big enough to hold the animal.” Iverson commanded as he stopped to lean against a control panel. He was fully panting now, and Lance wondered just how long he was going to last without medical attention. Perhaps they could simply outlast him, then leave him down here to die of blood loss just like he deserved. Except Lance didn’t really believe that. 

Looking around, Lance quickly realized that they were using A2 through A4 because A1’s front wall was a melting crater of wires, concrete, and metal. “Um,” Lance said as he stared at the mess. A1 was clearly the cell they’d seen in the video. It was larger and had concrete walls, or at least what was left of concrete walls. The others could have been called crates rather than cells. They were smaller and made of wire mesh, so that you could see inside and through every one, like a people-sized dog kennel. They had a temporary look compared to the concrete monstrosity of A1. There were no other visible prisoners, but there were three dead, lab-coat wearing humans laying in the corridor. 

“It’ll be fine,” Iverson grunted, answering Lance’s unasked question. “The cuffs are a recent acquirement that we were still studying. They’re supposed to keep him from using quintessence. Clearly they work as intended. He won't escape his new cell so easily.” 

“Riiiiight,” Hunk replied disbelievingly. 

Lance didn’t miss how Iverson’s description of the cuffs implied that he hadn’t actually been sure they would work. A renewed wave of helpless rage coursed through him at the thought of the danger Iverson had forced Pidge into. He knew it would never happen, that Iverson was too powerful a player here at the Garrison, but Lance still vowed to himself as he dragged the Galra along that the man would pay for his cruelty as soon as this crisis came to an end. 

Hunk dropped off Shirogane first, then moved over to help Pidge lift the unconscious wolf into the third cell. Lance took his time carrying his own living cargo, hesitant to step over the still crispy bodies lying in the corridor. But he did stoop through the open cell door just as Hunk and Pidge were jointly carrying the wolf into A4. 

That turned out to be a costly mistake. 

Suddenly all the cell doors slid closed. Lance let the Galra tumble from his grip as he swirled around, pressing his hands against the wire mesh, but it was already too late. 

“Iverson!” Pidge cried out. 

Iverson’s expression held no sympathy. With a wayward spray of spittle and blood, he hissed, “How stupid do you think I am?” 

Lance could never help himself. “Do you really want me to answer that?” 

“You three were just after the anti-viral. That what you wanted me to believe, isn't that right?” the man mocked. 

“We told you that!” 

Iverson spat another glob of blood and foam. “The anti-viral is being produced two labs over. You had no reason to be in the quintessence experiments lab. Hell, I gave you a chance to prove me wrong. God help me, I even armed you, but you couldn’t even do that right.” Iverson leaned against the wall harder, panting through his words. “I have no idea what would possess three humans to work with our enemies, but you will pay for how you’ve betrayed us. We’re going to show these scum exactly what happens when they attack the Garrison, and then I’ll come back and deal with you personally. If your ‘friends’ haven’t done it for me. 

“Iverson, you can't do this!” Lance shouted desperately, rattling the wire mesh. “You fucking nut job. Why would we help you lock them up if we were working with the Galra? This is insane! Let us out!” 

Perhaps insulting the man wasn’t the best way to get what he wanted, but desperation was clawing at Lance’s insides. How could he have been so fucking stupid, so naïve? Iverson had even called them traitors earlier. Of course the commander had been biding his time, lulling them into a false sense of security. He’d never just let that go, and now Hunk and Pidge were both trapped with a creature that wanted nothing more than to kill them. The wolf might be too injured to attack now, but as soon as it woke up, Lance was going to have to watch that animal tear his friend apart, helpless to stop it, all because he had trusted Iverson to act like a fucking human being. 

Iverson began to slowly limp away. 

Lance felt his stomach harden into a painful ball. “Let us out,” he commanded, “Or I’ll shoot you in the back.” 

He still had the gun Iverson had given him. It made even less sense now that before, that Iverson had armed him at all. But the man had, and now it was the only leverage that Lance still possessed. If Iverson could threaten them with a bullet in the brain, Lance could do the same. His arms wanted to tremble, but Lance managed to hold himself steady, sliding easily into a stance that he hadn’t bothered with in two years. 

Iverson turned around, hand still clutching his ravaged side. He held Lance’s gaze for a long, long moment. Lance kept the gun pointed directly at Iverson’s heart, the barrel shoved through the wire mesh of the cage. They both knew that Lance could make that shot in his sleep. 

But they also both knew that Lance would not. And that, ultimately, was what it came down to. 

The commander turned his back on the prisoners, and then he left them there. 

With a roar, Lance flung the hand gun behind himself as hard as possible. It was the epitome of a gun safety failure, but he couldn’t bear to hold the thing in his hands a millisecond longer. Miraculously, the gun didn’t go off when it hit the floor, but Hunk still screeched, “Lance!” 

Lance’s vision wavered with half-shed tears. He didn’t bother to turn around or answer his friend. He needed to get ahold of himself first. 

“Lance!” Hunk repeated, his voice going even shriller. 

“What!” As Lance turned around, he only expected to see his friends’ horrified expressions through the wire mesh separating their two cells. He hadn’t forgotten about the Galra exactly, but on the list of concerns, the injured alien held a place a few rows down from Iverson and the rabid animal. 

Lance’s heart stopped. 

Hunk hadn’t been trying to get Lance’s attention to comfort him. The engineer had been shouting a warning. 

The Galra’s eyes were open, glowing under the harsh florescence. He’d gotten his feet under himself, and was crouched on the back of his heels. Though his head didn’t turn away from Lance, one ear flicked back towards the gun, which had landed near the wall between the cells. It lay far closer to the Galra than to Lance. 

A heartbeat. Too short for even a full breath, and then both Lance and the Galra launched themselves towards the gun. 

*~*~* 

Keith woke to the sound of blood rushing in his ears, his arm insistently screaming pain signals at him as if the limb were currently being devoured by flames. He’d been moved from where he’d fallen unconscious and was now surrounded on all sides by multiple human heartbeats. He kept his eyes shut, doing his best to pretend limpness while ignoring the shriek of his arm and gathering his senses together. 

Where was Kosmo? 

Close, Keith sensed, but the wolf’s heartrate stuttered far too unevenly, and he smelled of his own blood. Something dense and metallic surrounded Keith, but he couldn’t tell exactly what it was from scent alone. He would know more once he opened his eyes and could see the flow of quintessence. Upsettingly, he couldn’t smell the Luxite of his knife anywhere nearby. 

For some unknown reason, he was not bound as he would have expected to be upon capture. 

A moment later, Keith finally opened his eyes, and several things became apparent at once. He had been locked inside a mesh cage with a young human male. The human held something shoved through the wire mesh of their cage, but with a wretched shriek, the human flung the object behind himself without looking back. The clatter told Keith immediately that the object was a gun. 

Keith did not waste another moment. As a person in the next cell called out, “Lance, Lance!” Keith rolled himself to his feet. He wasn’t fast enough or steady enough to actually stand, but he managed to crouch upright before the human listened to his comrade and turned around. 

The human froze. Through his quintessence vision, Keith absorbed a human who was thin and tall, almost gangly, before they both dove for the gun. Keith happened to be closer to where it had fallen, but he was badly injured, and he wasn’t quite fast enough. 

The human tackled him on the way down, latching onto Keith’s lower legs. Keith ignored him to stretch for the gun, but then the human clambered higher and dug his fingertips into the mutilated flesh on Keith’s arm. Keith spasmed, crying out. His other arm automatically drew back to scrabble at the human’s grip, trying to tear it away from his injury. They rolled over each other. Keith’s knee knocked into the human’s groin, and the human moaned, his grip slackening. The gun got kicked further away, hitting the back of the cell. 

Then with a great heave, Keith managed to separate himself from the human. 

He crouched in front of the gun, but did not pick it up, too afraid that the human would tackle him again if he turned away and too afraid that he would be too weak to successfully fight the human off if he did. Instead, Keith panted and waited on the human’s next move, the both of them frozen in a stalemate. 

Somewhere through the mesh on his left side, the same person who had shouted “Lance” was begging Keith, rattling his fists on the cage, “Please don’t do this. Please, I’m begging you. You don’t have to do this.” 

Keith wondered if Kuron had begged like that when these humans had ripped his arm off. Likely not. After giving all of himself to the Red Lion for Keith, there hadn’t been much of him left for begging. 

Then a different voice called out in atrociously accented Galran, “Nahko! Qafat. Kisha hash az!” _Stop! Please._ _We are Blades too!_

Slowly Keith turned his head to face the new speaker, though he kept one ear swiveled on the human in front of him. If the human thought he could rush Keith while the Galra was distracted, he would have another thing coming. 

The human who had called out in Galran turned out to be a scrawny female, her fingers pressed against the wiring that separated her from Keith and the male. Keith could smell her tears, and almost immediately, he realized that she and the second human male were locked in a cage with the unconscious wolf, similar to how the first male was trapped with him. 

Why? These humans were Blades? _Impossible._ There were no human Blades. But she was reaching for a leather band that hung around her thin neck, a match to the one that hung on his. _Impossible._ Yet Keith could smell it now that she had removed the band from under her shirt. You couldn’t fake the faint quintessence tang of Luxite, and indeed, a tiny metal sliver hung from the leather, clenched in her trembling hands. 

“Qafat,” she repeated. _Please._

But if these humans were some sort of ally, why had the gangly one gone for the gun? Keith swiveled his full attention back to the human in the cell with him. Though the human didn’t take his eyes off of Keith either, he spoke to the female in the neighboring cell. “Since when do you speak Galran?” 

The female bit out, “Not really the time, Lance.” 

“ _Kisha hash_ — ‘we also are’, right? And _Az_ , that’s, um—.” 

“Blades,” answered the other male on Keith’s right. “It’s Blades, I think.” 

“I knew that!” 

Where was the fourth human? The one that had clearly been in charge? Keith snapped at the one in the cell with him. “Why are you imprisoned with me? What do you want?” 

The gangly human scoffed, “It wasn’t, like, a personal choice, dude. Iverson fucked us over, same as you.” Keith’s English wasn’t good enough to understand the entire context of that statement with all the slang, but he didn’t want to admit it, so he simply didn’t reply. 

The human did not seem to require a reply from Keith to continue babbling, however, because he just kept talking, his words fast and difficult to follow. “So really, it would be pretty stupid to attack me at this point. You’d just be doing him a favor, and who wants to do Iverson any sort of favor, the asshole. You seem like a nice enough murdering, psychopathic Galra, so I say let’s all let bygones be bygones and just sit very nicely in this cell together. What do you say?” 

Keith wasn't sure if he was actually being asked a question or if there was just something mentally deficient with the gangly human. “—What?” 

“I’ll even let you keep the gun, because I’m just that cool of a dude. See, we’re like totally friends now.” 

The second male said, “Lance, he’s going to strangle you just to shut you up.” 

In truth, the gun lay safely behind Keith now, and this Lance seemed too afraid to attack Keith without the weapon for an advantage, despite Keith’s injuries. So with a sigh, Keith collapsed down while the humans argued with each other. The injuries, blood sacrifices, and emotional turmoil had left him shaking and weak. 

For some reason the humans hadn’t killed him yet. That meant he still had a chance if only he was smart enough and bold enough to take it. So he would start by using this opportunity for respite while he could, damn his pride. 

He could feel both Lotor and the Lion clawing at the inside of his head, the Lion possessive and fierce, Lotor slyer, softer. 

He’d overheard the radio message from earlier, that Lotor’s forces were attacking the front gate. It had to be a distraction. Unlike his father, Lotor had never particularly cared about the human scourge on their planet. He had no reason to directly attack the Garrison. Nor did he have a hope in hell of successfully breaching the east gate. Keith had only managed to get through the outer wall through a mix of his inside aid and his incredibly strong talent for using blood sacrifice for Flashing. Very few other Galra could pull off what he had. Very few could have climbed up that concrete wall without rope or stakes or could have moved so silently through the complex. Plus, he’d gotten lucky. He suspected that the quintessence spill had affected some of the Garrison’s computer systems, causing even more chaos. 

No, Lotor had to be using a frontal assault as a distraction for a separate group that would move as Keith had. Swift and silent. And they were coming for Keith. 

*~*~* 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you as always for reading. <3 Comments and kudos are love. 
> 
> I don't always reply to comments, just as a forewarning. Sorry about that, I get weird misplaced anxiety about it sometimes, and I've just had to admit to myself that I won't always do it. However, I read each one lovingly and they make my day. <3


	5. Those Who Seek Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith and others come to a fragile understanding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [3/6/19] So I got some comments that things were getting a bit confusing. Some of that is on purpose, because Lance has no idea about anything that's going on, and Keith thinks he does, but he is very, very wrong. Lol. But, it shouldn't be so confusing as to interrupt the narrative, and so keeping that in mind, I moved a chapter opener from Lance's point of view up from this chapter to chapter 2. 
> 
> I do love constructive feedback though, so let me know if after you read this chapter, we're still in the annoying, 'I have no idea what's going on' world, rather than the intriguing 'I have no idea what's going on world.'

*~*~* 

Growing up in Daibazaal, Keith learned quickly which people around the palace should be avoided, which ones would hiss insults at him in passing, which would try to trip as he walked down corridors, and which people would corner him in isolated spaces. His tormentors never changed. The ones who ignored him pretty much always ignored him, and the ones who didn’t could always be counted on to find new ways to harass the young Galra. 

So when Sendak grabbed Keith’s shoulder as he passed him in the hallway one day, Keith didn’t know what to make of it. Sendak had never bothered him before. In fact, he had never even seemed to notice Keith at all, but for some reason, Sendak forcefully grabbed Keith’s chin, tipping him up to directly face the commander’s gaze. 

“So this is Kuron’s protégé,” spat Sendak, sending spittle flying towards Keith’s face. “Pathetic. You should have been given a clean death when you were born wrong, not left to insult the rest of us with your presence.” 

Keith kneed him in the groin. 

Sendak grunted in surprise and pain, fingers spasming on Keith’s chin. His other hand came up quickly to fist Keith’s collar, trapping him there before he could run. “You little shit,” he hissed. “Do you think you’re fucking funny?” 

It didn’t occur to Keith until after he did it that Sendak was Zarkon’s most popular officer besides Kuron or that Sendak might actually kill him. 

It was just that Keith had learned early in his life that if he didn’t fight back, if he didn’t make it not worth the effort every single time for every single offense, then the torment inevitably escalated. Kuron had starting teaching Keith how to use his talent for blood sacrificing to enhance his body, but Keith wasn’t very good at it yet. Thus, if he didn’t react quickly enough, an attacker would just have to get far enough away from Keith for Keith to lose his sense of them. For some of the teenagers around the palace, it was a sort of game to attack Keith and then dart away before he could retaliate, taunting him about his impotence. 

Sendak was not some random teenager. 

Keith could hear how Sendak’s heartrate ticked up from the sudden pain in his groin, his lungs squeezing together through a sharp inhale. The smaller Galra’s mind buzzed with a mix of adrenaline and fear. He was trapped by Sendak’s grip on his collar and chin. “Actually, I think I’m fucking hilarious,” he replied, far more brazen than he actually felt. 

The hand that clutched at Keith’s chin grabbed a fistful of his hair and jerked him up by the scalp. Sendak growled, “I’m going to enjoy teaching you your place, blood-whore.” 

Before Keith could react, there came the sound of a confident and crisp voice, a voice that had grown to be as familiar to Keith as his own. “As it is two Dobashes past lunch, I believe that place is with me.” 

_Kuron was here._ Keith’s entire body melted with relief at the sound of his friend’s voice. Kuron would make everything all right. 

Except that Sendak did not release Keith from his hold. If anything, his grip on Keith’s scalp tightened even further. “Your protégé laid his hand on a superior officer,” Sendak accused, his breath hot on Keith’s face. 

“Oh?” exclaimed Kuron mildly. “From where I was, it seemed more like his foot.” 

Sendak huffed, “Look here, Kuron—.” 

“That would be Paladin Kuron, Commander Sendak,” Kuron corrected, his voice still perfectly even. “And if you are truly so insulted by the actions of a child, then of course, we can take your complaint to the disciplinary board. You are welcome to tell them all about how you allowed a thirteen-year-old child to knee you in the genitals.” 

The grip on Keith’s hair tightened to the point of excruciating pain, before he was suddenly released. Keith didn’t waste a second scrambling back to stand beside his savoir and out of Sendak’s reach. 

“This isn't over,” Sendak threatened. 

Now that Keith was out of immediate harm’s way, Kuron tone became far more acidic. Contempt dripped from his mouth as he grabbed Keith’s shoulder to steer him away. 

“Good. In the future, remember how ridiculous you look when you harass children because you are too cowardly to attack those with whom your ire truly lies.” Kuron’s grip on Keith was nearly as tight as Sendak’s had been as the Paladin led Keith down the hallway until they came to Kuron’s quarters. He did not release his charge until they were safely inside, the door locked behind them. 

“You really have a knack for picking fights with all the worst people, don’t you?” Kuron accused tiredly as he sagged down into one of his sitting chairs. 

Keith remained standing. “You heard him. He thinks I don’t deserve to be alive. That my life is worthless because I can't see his stupid face.” 

“Trust me, you’re better off than the rest of us in that particular regard.” 

Keith insisted hotly, “I can't just let that shit stand!” 

“Why not?” 

At that, Keith cocked his head at his friend. Kuron had been training Keith for a few months now whenever he had the time, lessons the older man had begun for the express purpose of giving the younger Galra a way to fight back against his bullies. 

“I don’t understand.” 

Kuron sighed. “Just because he says it, doesn’t make it true. In that way, he can only take from you what you choose to give him.” 

Keith knew that Kuron was right, at least intellectually, but it was too hard to admit out loud that he might have been reckless in fighting back against someone as powerful as Sendak or that he might have made the wrong choice. Especially to the only person whose opinion he had ever cared about. Then again, what if Kuron decided that he didn’t want to train someone who kept getting into so much trouble? What if he decided that Keith wasn’t worth it? 

“Are you going to stop training me?” Keith asked tremulously, doing his best and still failing to sound like he didn’t care one way or the other. He wouldn’t beg. If Kuron really was finished with him, Keith refused to humiliate himself by crying or trying to change Kuron’s mind. He had more self-respect than that. 

But Kuron just seemed confused by the question. “What are you talking about? Why would I stop training you?” 

“I thought—.” 

Kuron emphasized his next words by suddenly rising and placing his right hand, the one that gave him so much power, onto Keith’s shoulder. He held the younger Galra in a firm grip. Unlike earlier, his touch was steady rather than painful. “Listen to me carefully, Keith,” the Black Paladin demanded in a low voice. “I promise you that I will never leave you. I will never give up on you. But more importantly than that, Keith, you can't give up on yourself. Not now. Not ever. You have to learn to control your power. It’s the only chance you have.” 

“The only chance at what?” 

Kuron shook his head. The younger Galra could feel him frowning. “You’ll understand one day.” 

Keith flicked his ears in a dismissive gesture. “Whatever.” 

With another sigh, Kuron changed the subject. “As for Sendak, his fight is with me, not you. I’m sorry that you got caught up in it. He finds bloodwhoring distasteful, and yet desperately wishes it were him, not me, bound to Zarkon. He’s jealous, and hates himself for it. And now that it’s well-known that I’m teaching you the finer aspects of blood sacrifice, in his mind you’ve become connected to that jealousy of me.” 

Keith had guessed most of that already, but it was pleasing that Kuron trusted him, that Keith was considered adult enough to talk politics with the Paladin, even if it was a barely veiled attempt to distract Keith from Kuron’s earlier caginess. Keith still nodded, eager to show he was worthy of Kuron’s trust. “I’m a safer target than you.” 

Kuron did not reply, but Keith heard the affirmation in his friend’s silence regardless. 

After thinking about how to phase it for moment and then deciding to just go for it, Keith added, “Also, you’re wrong, by the way.” 

“Oh?” 

Keith crossed his arms over his chest defiantly. “If his fight is with you, then it’s with me too.” 

“Keith—,” Kuron began. 

“No!” Keith cut him off before Kuron could finish the sentence. “You won't change my mind on this so you might as well accept it.” 

“Is that so?” Kuron asked, the words dripping dangerously from his mouth. 

Keith would not be cowed like that. “Yes,” he insisted. “It is.” 

The smaller Galra waited with bated breath for Kuron’s response. He thought maybe Kuron would admonish him further, or just awkwardly drop the whole topic. What he didn’t expect was for Kuron to let out a bellowing laugh, almost hysterical in pitch, and then ruffle his fingers affectionately through Keith’s hair. “You really are incredible, Keith, you know that?” 

Keith didn’t quite manage the haughty air he was going for as he batted Kuron’s hand away. “Of course. I’ve got the best teacher.” 

Kuron just snorted, and said, “Thank you.” Then his tone became far softer as he added, “My blood brother.” __

Keith shivered at the title. “Anytime,” he replied, and he wished there was a better way to let Kuron know just how much he meant it. 

*~*~* 

*~*Those Who Seek Ghosts*~* 

*~*~* 

After their tussle for the gun came to a stalemate, the Galra sat down cross-legged in front of the gun and closed his eyes like he happened to be perfectly fucking comfortable. Lance was almost insulted that he had been deemed so low a threat that the Galra would just ignore him while they were still trapped together. _Asshole._

Hunk and Pidge both stayed pressed against the mesh, watching Lance and the Galra like if either looked away for even an instant, then the Galra would renew his attack. Lance, however, had the suspicion that the Galra was a lot more injured than he was letting on. He had practically collapsed when Lance had managed to grab him by the arm earlier, and he had punched Lance with far less force than Lance would have expected. And Lance had a lot of experience with getting punched, so he felt like his conclusion had scientific weight behind it. 

But the seconds ticked on, and still the Galra didn’t so much as twitch. Nor did his pet. Lance and his crew just continued to stare at each other in terror. Every now and then the ceiling would rumble, reminding them that there was a battle happening above this silent basement. Lance wondered what would happen if either Shirogane or the wolf recovered enough to wake back up. The cuffs likely meant that Shirogane couldn’t get at them again without being let out of his cage. The wolf was another story. 

Maybe the animal wouldn’t wake up at all. Maybe it would bleed out and die in its sleep. Maybe Hunk and Pidge were relatively safe. If Lance got the gun, he could shoot the wolf to make sure that happened. He should have thought about that before he’d lost his temper, throwing away his only weapon. No wonder the Garrison had kicked him out. He couldn't have managed a bigger fuck up if he tried. 

Could he rush the Galra at this point? Try to grab the gun again? A second fight for the gun was almost certain to be a fight to the death though. Could he do that? 

While Lance was thinking, Hunk purposely let out a big sigh, interrupting the silence as he began a conversation with Pidge. “You lied to us,” the engineer accused, having apparently decided to just ignore the Galra and have this fight right now. Easy for him to do. Hunk wasn’t the one locked in the cage with a murder happy alien. The thought of which had Lance looking longingly at the gun still laying behind the Galra. What he would have given to have that comfort in his hand right now. _God, he was so fucking stupid._

At least the Galra hadn’t tried again to grab the gun himself. Which, then again, it wasn’t like he needed the gun to hurt Lance. 

Pidge bit his lip, but his expression was more defiant than guilty. 

In response, Hunk grew more forceful. “You lied to us, Pidge. After everything I’ve—we’ve done for you. We deserve an explanation.” 

Pidge snorted. “Yeah, well, sometimes people don’t get what they deserve. Life’s a bitch that way.” 

Lance hated feeling like the stupid one, but sometimes Hunk and Pidge got each other in a way that he simply couldn’t follow. “Wait, what did Pidge lie about? I don’t get it.” He glanced closer at the Galra to see what he was making of this conversation, but the Galra hadn’t so much as turned his ears in their direction. Maybe he couldn't care less about their petty human squabbles. 

Hunk did not look happy at Pidge’s dismissive response. “Yes Pidge, why don’t you tell Lance _what_ you’ve been lying about?” 

“This isn't about that.” 

“No, you’ve just been carrying around a Galran made necklace, learning to speak Galran, and encouraging your crew mates to break into secure facilities for funzies.” 

Pidge crossed his arms defensively. “You wanted to do this. I didn’t make you do anything.” 

“Is this about what Iverson said?” Lance interrupted, still hating that he was obviously missing half the context of this conversation. “About us being in the wrong lab? Because he’s probably full of shit.” He glanced back again to make sure the Galra was still ignoring them. He was. 

Hunk did not raise his voice, but it still carried. In a slightly broken tone, he said to Pidge, “You told me that New Haven didn’t deserve to suffer because of Iverson’s bullshit. Because of our mistake. Remember that? You told me that you wanted to help my family.” 

For a second, Lance didn’t think Pidge would reply. Or that if he did, he would continue to be dismissive. But in a voice nearly as broken, Pidge replied, “You would do anything for your family. Well. I would do anything for mine.” 

“Like tricking us into helping you break into the secret Garrison quintessence lab?” 

Pidge didn’t hesitate, though tears were starting to prickle at his eyes. “Yes.” 

Lance could only stare, still dumb-founded at the conversation happening in the next cell over. Pidge had actually tricked them? Pidge? 

“Where is the anti-viral formula, if not down here?” 

There Pidge pause, but then he eventually held up his leather band and deftly drew the odd metal token he had showed the Galra aside. Hanging behind it, lay a tiny, flat USB device. 

“I still don’t understand,” Lance repeated, staring at Pidge and Hunk. 

Hunk, whom Lance had heard curse so few times before that he could count the instances on one finger, said, _“You bitch.”_ The engineer’s hands clenched and unclenched.He looked like he wanted to punch something. 

Pidge hung his head. “I didn’t mean for it to happen this way.” 

“Did you help the Galra? Are you the reason we’re under attack?” Hunk demanded, ignoring the apology completely. 

“Not in the way you’re thinking.” 

Then, instead of continuing to deny or admit to the charge, Pidge explained in a way that felt like a non-sequitur to Lance, “What I’ve never told you or anyone else at the Garrison, is that my father was the head researcher at the Kerberos Lab. My brother was his understudy.” 

Despite his lack of interest in history, Lance immediately understood at least part of what Pidge was trying to tell them with that admission. The Kerberos Lab was famous for having been the site of last battle of the Galran-Human conflict that had come to a stalemate almost two years ago. Having committed genocide against the Alteans, Zarkon had turned his attention to killing off all the humans who had been unlucky enough to be stuck on this side of the destroyed wormhole. 

Zarkon had numbers on his side, but the humans had weapons and technology that the Galra could only dream of. The Galra’s weapons while powerful, were costly to use, requiring large amounts of quintessence to function. And the leader of the murdered Alteans, Alfor, had made sure that the most powerful of all Quintescent’s weapons lay in pieces. He’d split Voltron into five and scattered them across the planet to spite Zarkon. But even with only the Black Lion useable, Zarkon had been making huge inroads into destroying the humans trapped on his planet. 

But then he had used the Black Lion to attack the Kerberos lab. 

The commanding officer of the lab, Lieutenant Takashi Shirogane, had planned a brilliant ambush. Everyone knew that the Lion was only ever seen with one pilot. They called him the Black Paladin. It was said that he was a sort of Proxy for Zarkon, that Zarkon controlled his actions through strange blood magic. Either way, he was the most feared Galra that the humans had ever seen, even more so than Zarkon, because while Zarkon sat in the background and delivered commands, the Black Paladin would light up his arm and burn through his enemies himself or use his Lion to rain fire down from the sky. 

But Shirogane had tricked the Black Paladin into leaving the safety of his Lion. Then in an incredible bout of selfless heroics, Shirogane had slain the demon that haunted all of the humans’ nightmares. He’d been killed for it, and the lab completely overrun. But he’d also proven that the Lion did indeed only have one pilot. The Black Lion had yet to be seen since that day, and that respite had allowed the humans and Balmerans the opportunity to rally and regroup. To survive. 

If Pidge’s father and brother had been at Kerberos, then they were dead. 

“Oh. I’m so, so sorry Pidge. That must have been really hard.” Lance couldn’t imagine losing one of his parents or his many siblings to so terrifying a tragedy. To know that their last moments had been ones of pain and misery. 

But Pidge didn’t seem to want Lance’s condolences. “Do you know what they were researching at the Kerberos lab?” he asked. Lance shook his head, and Pidge answered darkly, “Neither do I. No one does. It’s not in any of the archives or secret servers that I’ve managed to find. But whatever it was, it was important enough for the Galra to send the Black Paladin and his Lion there to stop it. To risk their greatest weapon. And since they brought the Black Lion, they could have just blown the lab up from the sky, but they didn’t. Did you ever wonder why? The Galra landed and attacked on foot with the only person who could pilot their biggest weapon.” 

“Quintessence.” 

Lance jerked around. The Galra was once again staring at them with his freaky glowing eyes. His ears lay completely flat against his unruly hair. But as they watched, instead of clarifying his statement, he turned away, removing the scarf that had been haphazardly wrapped around his neck. He gingerly began to bind his exposed injury, feigning disinterest once more. 

If he thought about it for too long, Lance found it rather unbelievable that the humans and the Galran agent had gone from trying to kill each other to chatting about conspiracy theories in the span of ten minutes. But after everything else that had gone wrong today, he’d take any development that wasn’t horribly shitty and violent. If the Galra was interested in the Kerberos battle and not in murdering his cellmate, then by all means, Lance could chat about that for as long as he was capable of bullshitting. Which was a very long time indeed. 

Pidge’s mouth thinned out to a sliver. “I suspect so, yes,” he agreed, as if it weren’t a hostile Galra he was speaking to. “Some experiment involving quintessence that was either so dangerous or so subversive that they couldn’t study it here. My father is an expert in biochemical engineering. He came to this planet in the first place to study Quintessence.” 

Pidge’s father must be old then, if he had been an adult before the destruction of the wormhole had trapped so many people here. Unlike Lance, whose family were some of the earliest settlers of the planet. They boasted several generations of proud Quintescent born children. Hunk, he knew, had family that had been here nearly as long. 

The Galra did not look away from his arm, but he said, “They would have wanted the Lion available for quick and safe _elate_ —eh, transport, of the prisoners. To make sure the humans could not stop them.” 

“Prisoners?” asked Lance. He still had no idea why the Galra was choosing now to be so chatty, but everyone knew that the Galra didn’t take prisoners. And if they did, it was more of a slightly delayed death than true imprisonment, as Zarkon liked to use humans to feed the monsters in his infamously freaky death-match colosseums. 

Hunk answered, “The researchers.” He looked at Pidge. “You think your family is alive. Like Shirogane.” 

“I think the Garrison did its best to cover up whatever the hell they were doing at Kerberos, and that included faking the deaths of everyone working there rather than having to explain why the Galra would want a bunch of human scientists as prisoners of war.” 

Lance frowned. “But even if the Garrison did cover up what happened at Kerberos, how would that translate to you helping Galra attack the Garrison now?” Because he had finally grasped it. It wasn’t a coincidence that this Galra had attacked at the same time as them or that there was now a Galra led assault against the front gate. 

“Not the Galra. _Some_ Galra. There’s a group working against Zarkon.” Pidge shot a sideways glance at their fellow prisoner at that, but the Galra was still pretending not to care. Biting his lip, Pidge continued, “I discovered them when I first began hacking into the Garrison mainframe. They call themselves the Blades of Marmora. I made contact with them, and we started communicating information back and forth.” 

Lance looked at him aghast. “You’re telling us you just trusted some Galran stranger?! Pidge!” 

“I didn’t have a lot of options, Lance,” Pidge bit out. “No one else was going to help me find my family.” 

“We would have,” Hunk interjected, and even Lance had to pause for a quick inhale at that. The words were condemning in their simplicity. 

With a pained sounding swallow, Pidge eventually explained, “My contact told me that they believe the Garrison is holding one of their people in a remote location, but they weren’t sure where. If I helped them get that information, they would help me get down here, provide a distraction. They said they were sending a single agent, and they gave me instructions on how to make a communicator he could read. It was just supposed to be one. That’s it. I didn’t think—.” 

“You didn’t think that helping even a single Galra access the Garrison would get anyone hurt?” demanded Hunk. “Seriously?” 

“My contacts are not associated with Lotor,” Pidge insisted. “I have just as much idea of what’s going on as you do.” 

Lance cocked his head at the Galra, who was still pretending not to listen and still being very unconvincing in the act. “So you’re with this secret resistance group thing?” he asked. “Do you know what’s going on with the other Galra at the gate?” 

The Galra raised his head and just stared at Lance. His eyes were like a livewire, and Lance simply couldn’t help himself. It was too freaky to ignore. “Also, what the hell is wrong with your eyes, dude?” No the smoothest words perhaps, but Lance’s brain to mouth filter tended to have an inverse relationship with his stress level. And he was rather stressed. 

“Lance,” Hunk hissed. 

“What?” 

The Galra blinked slowly. Thankfully, he didn’t seem inherently offended by the question. Then he told them, “I’m almost completely blind.” He might have been telling them he was a Sagittarius for how nonchalantly he said it. Both Lance and Hunk exchanged a look that said, _wait, what?_ Only Pidge didn't look dumbfounded at the revelation. 

Personally, Lance spent an incredibly long five seconds believing that the Galra had to be making some weird alien joke, before he realized that no punch line was forthcoming. “But, but—.” Trailing off, Lance went back through his recent memory, recalibrating every time this Galra had committed some insane act of violence. The Galra had done all that—blind? 

“No way.” 

The Galra ignored Lance to give his attention Pidge. “You believe that Zarkon kidnapped your family and all the humans who weren’t killed during the Kerberos Battle,” he said, letting go of the ruse that he had not cared at all about the humans’ conversation. “And yet, from what I’ve heard, Zarkon’s forces were forced to retreat from that battle. They were barely able to recover the Black Lion. Where would they have taken all these potential prisoners? That abomination wearing Kuron’s arm is imprisoned here with the humans, not the Galra. Is it not more likely that the humans have your family as well?” 

He said abomination like Lance’s mother might have said ‘cockroach.’ With spit. 

Pidge shook his head in disagreement. “The Garrison has only had Shiro for a few months. Whatever happened to him, happened to him because of the Galra.” 

The injured Galra made a little humming noise that Lance didn’t think was an agreement. 

In a moment of pure inspiration, Lance snapped his fingers at the Galra. “Hey, what’s your name, by the way?” 

Rather than immediately answering, the Galra frowned like he wasn’t sure if this was a trap or not. Lance added, “I just don’t want to keep calling you ‘the murderous Galra I’m trapped in a cell with’ in my head. Seems a little impersonal.” 

“Lance!” groaned both Pidge and Hunk together, but the Galra replied gruffly, “Keith.” 

Lance blinked at him. “Really? But that’s—.” 

“Human?” The slightly murderous, miniature Galra, whose name they now knew was Keith, let out a little laugh. “My caretakers found it humorous. A fitting name for one destined to be a blood-wh—.” 

With that, he trailed off, and they never did find out what Keith had been destined to be. 

“Okay, well, I’m Lance.” 

“Pidge,” said Pidge. 

“And I’m Hunk.” 

Keith didn’t respond with any pleasantries. He just trailed back off again into thoughtful silence. Then he faced Pidge. Now that Lance knew, he could see that there was something slightly off about how the Galra looked at people. Like his ability to make eye contact was just a tad on the wrong side of the uncanny valley. Very brusquely, Keith asked, “Do you knew where the rest of Kuron’s body is?” 

Obviously sensing how much of a terrible act Keith’s nonchalance was, Pidge said carefully. “I’m sorry. I know you’ve mentioned his name a couple of times now. But I don’t know who that is.” 

Even though Pidge had been so careful, the Galra still exploded. “Kuron! The Black Paladin. The Champion of the Galra!” he pointed to the still unconscious Shirogane. “Someone sewed his arm onto that creature. Kuron!” 

Several things fell into place then. The Galra’s earlier demands of Iverson, his pure outrage and hatred. Kuron was apparently the name of the Black Paladin, the Galra who had been cut down by Lieutenant Shirogane at the Battle of Kerberos. It was strange to think of the Black Paladin that had terrorized so many humans as having a real name. _Kuron._ To have someone who cared enough about him to breach the heart of the enemy just to find him. Were they some sort of family? Could someone like the Black Paladin even have a family? 

And then for Keith to have not even discovered his full body. Just an arm? No wonder the Galra was so pissed. 

“You’re saying that the Black Paladin, as in the Black Lion’s pilot, that Back Paladin’s arm is welded onto Lieutenant Shirogane?” Lance still couldn’t believe it. If that were true, could it be a coincidence that it was the Paladin’s killer that now wielded his arm? Was it some sort of weird ritual thing? Lance would have a better idea if he just understood what possible reason there could be in the first place for Frankensteining two people together. “Are you fucking serious?” 

The Galra took a deep, long breath. Then he asked very carefully, “This Shiro as you’ve named him, is Lieutenant—Shirogane? _The_ Lieutenant Shirogane? He’s the abomination?” 

That was when Lance realized he might have made another major mistake in letting Keith know the connection between who he had been trying to kill, and who he had been trying to find. But Lance couldn't just let this Galra talk shit about Shirogane of all people. Not the man Lance had hero-worshipped for most of his life. “Shirogane is a hero, not an abomination,” Lance defended hotly. 

Keith stood up in one swift movement. With his anger fueling him, he suddenly seemed a lot steadier on his feet. “He is a murderer!” hissed the Galra. 

The change in their fragile atmosphere of truce was instantaneous. All of the Galra’s thin friendliness and goodwill vanished. Lance could feel the adrenaline settling back down in the pit of his stomach. It almost felt good, like being set free. Maybe he was going to get his sequel to fight for the gun after all. 

“Because Shirogane took out one of the maniacs trying to commit genocide against us? Sorry, not sorry, dude.” 

Lance knew he couldn’t behave more antagonistically to the Galra right now if he tried, but he couldn’t seem to control the verbal vomit currently spewing from his mouth. Just because he had briefly tried to use his famous charm to make nice with the creature he was locked in a small space with, didn’t mean that he had forgotten about all the humans the Galra had murdered on the way down here. And then to name Shirogane, of all people, a murderer? _No fucking way._

At Lance’s words, Keith actually snarled, animalistic and fierce, his lips drawn high up to expose a sharp set of fangs. The sight was both thrilling and terrifying. “You will not speak of Kuron that way,” the Galra warned. 

Lance still couldn’t get over the gall that Keith had in judging anyone else for their murdering tendencies. “Or what?” he sneered. 

“Enough,” bellowed Hunk, reminding Lance that there were other people in the room besides himself and the slim Galra. “Both of you, stop it.” And there was something so insane about Hunk of all people daring to command a Galra and speaking with such ferocity, that even Keith froze. Though the Galra did keep his ears flat against his hair, his lips still curled up. 

Hunk acted like he didn’t notice that the Galra’s hostility was at least partially now directed at him. Instead, he lectured with all the indignation of someone wholly confident in their righteousness. “Don’t you guys think there’s been enough violence and threats and gun waving for one day? Lance, we came here because we wanted to help people. All of us, even Keith it seems,” he stumbled just slightly over the name, “are here because of someone we love. I won’t let that be corrupted by watching you two try to murder each other.” 

Lance didn’t dare take his eyes off of the Galra as he argued. “He’s the one—.” 

“Lance,” Hunk pleaded, drawing the word out, letting the C hiss through his teeth, “Can't you see how much pain he’s in?” 

Slowly, Lance turned away from the Galra to meet his friend’s gaze. Lance felt trapped by that gaze, and as the two friends stared at each other, Lance found his muscles unwillingly unlocking from their tense stance one by one, like the pull of a mechanical windup toy. 

Hunk whispered, “Thank you.” 

Before Lance could reply, Keith broke the moment, waving his arms in a gesture at himself. “I am a Galra,” he reminded them. “I am not with you. Just because I gave you my name and I asked you for information does not make us friends. I came here for my own reasons.” 

His ears flickered between the humans, as if he could catch their intentions by sound alone, and he seemed so lost, so baffled, that it disrupted Lance’s image of him as this inhuman growling, feral creature. And even though two seconds ago, he had been ready to launch himself at the Galra’s throat, Lance couldn’t help the snorting laughter that escaped him. It was just too similar to the reactions other humans had had at one time or another upon being exposed to Hunk’s New Haven-esque thinking. 

Lance finally deliberately relaxed his posture the rest of the way, and though the Galra didn’t exactly follow suit, his ears did swivel and perk forward, like his curiosity was overcoming his aggression. “Dude, Hunk is from New Haven. You know, the joint Human-Balmeran settlement? They practically invented inter-species Kumbaya. Twenty more minutes locked in these cages with him, and we’ll probably start a drum circle together. You’ll be telling him all about your deep-seated mother issues or something.” 

As Lance spoke, the Galra’s mystified expression from earlier shifted into something more defensive, as if he wasn’t sure if he were being made fun of or not. He scoffed, “I don't have a mother.” 

“See?” Lance retorted, unable to let such a pristine opportunity pass him by. “Exactly like that.” 

“Shut up, Lance,” said Hunk. 

It wasn’t that Lance was ignoring the fact that regardless of whether or not Keith attacked Lance, this Galra still wanted to finish off his already impressive murder spree with Lieutenant Shirogane. But now that it was clear that they weren’t going to duke it out right now at this very moment, it was either move forward under the assumption that Keith wasn't actually biding his time until he gruesomely offed his cellmate with his bare hands, or let the overwhelming threat of imminent murder freeze Lance up into a useless sack of meat balled up in the fetal position. One option was clearly better than the other. 

Keith’s lips curled over his teeth again. Lance suspected that if he had possessed a tail, it would be lashing back and forth. “I might not know this ‘Kumbeyat’ thing—.” 

“Kumbaya.” 

“—Whatever. But I know humans, and I won't be so easily tricked with soft words and empty promises.” 

From the other cell, Pidge immediately cut in, “I don't need your trust, just your help. Or at least, the Blade of Marmora’s help.” 

Hunk, meanwhile, replied, “I don’t think we’re all that different from each other, humans, Galra, Balmerans, whatever. We’re all just people.” 

Lance rolled his eyes at his friend. He crossed his own arms over his chest. “Fucking hippy.” 

Keith spat surprisingly aggressively, “Not so different? Not so different? What do humans know of honor and sacrifice? How can you trust a people who don’t know what it means to bleed for a cause, to want something so badly that you’d put your soul on the line to get it? _Not so different?_ Your kind are little better than worms crawling mindlessly through filth.” 

Apparently they really had lost all of the Galra’s goodwill by defending Shirogane. 

_Worms crawling through filth, seriously?_ “Uh, racist much? Jesus.” 

“Wouldn’t it be speciesist?” pondered Hunk, who, unlike Lance, didn’t sound too bothered by the Galra’s rather telling rant. 

Pidge glared at Keith through the mesh. Pidge’s glares were patently pants-shittingly terrifying, true enough, but if the Galra had been telling the truth earlier, the posturing was probably a bit lost on him. “You’re the one who wanted my information. Seems I wasn’t just a mindless worm five minutes ago when you needed something from me.” 

The Galra darted forward so abruptly that Lance shrieked in alarm and scrambled backwards as far as he could, banging his back against the door. But rather than attacking his cellmate, Keith hooked his fingers into the mesh separating him from the others. “You want to prove to me that humans aren’t soulless, murderous parasites? Hmn, girl?” He rattled the cage at Pidge, but in a fit of bravery, the comm expert refused to look away as the Galra spat his hateful words. 

“Then take that shard of Luxite you have hanging from your neck. Take it, and first slice a line through one of the wolf’s haunches, just deep enough to bleed, but not enough to damage muscle. Next, take the Luxite to your own skin. The hands and the heart are both good spots for sacrificing strength. Do that, and let the blood gather in your hand until you have enough. You have to have the right intention, a powerful intention, or it will never work. Let you blood go to the wolf, let him take from you, until your strength becomes his. Save his life, and I might trust that humans are actually capable of selflessness.” 

They stayed locked in a silent contest. It went on and on, all of the prisoners entirely mute. 

Then Pidge shook his head, rejecting the Galra. “You’re insane.” 

The Galra deflated, sinking away from the mesh. He slowly lowered himself back into the lotus position. Before he did though, Lance caught a glimpse of blood on the floor where the Galra had been sitting earlier. Apparently he was bleeding in more places than his arm. Keith closed his eyes once more, though now they knew that closed eyes meant less for this Galra than it would for others. He said, “I know. Because for a single moment I considered it possible that a human might be capable of real sacrifice.” 

*~*~* 

Keith could feel Kosmo dying, both through their bond and by the sound of the wolf’s fluttering heartbeat. How far away did the wolf lay? Six feet? Ten feet? And yet Keith could not reach him. He couldn’t help him. Not without Luxite. Not after having already made so many other sacrifices today. If it had to happen, then the wolf should have died surrounded by his pack. He should have had someone to hold him as he faded back into the flow of quintessence. Instead he was going to die virtually alone, and Keith could blame no one but himself. 

Oh, how he hated these humans. He hated their incessant chattering, their fear and self-righteousness. He hated that he kept getting hints of _Kuron_ through his nostrils, only to remember. 

He was probably growing delirious. If it hadn’t already started, it would soon. The wound on his arm was too severe. He could feel that blood was already starting to soak through his scarf. The burn wasn’t bleeding so much, but the sword cut wouldn’t close up properly, and even without bleeding, the burn was making his nerves scream. The pounding of Lotor against his mind wasn’t exactly helping either. Though a blood bond didn’t allow for speech, he could feel Lotor’s intention worming its way through his thoughts. _I see you. I know where you are._

_I’m coming for you._

Then Keith heard the approaching noise. _Footsteps._

Keith froze, straining all of his senses. “Be silent,” he snarled at the humans. The lanky one, Lance, sputtered and complained, but Keith showed him his teeth. Wisely, the human shut his mouth. Keith shifted to his feet. If the approaching footsteps belonged to whom he feared they did, then he wouldn’t be caught unprepared in his weakness. 

How many? Keith focused on the faint echoing. Fast. Walking in formation. So they must be military. They weren’t being particularly quiet, but that didn’t mean much. He could see a mass of quintessence but they were still too far away for him to parse them apart. Definitely more than three though. 

“What it is?” demanded the lanky one. Of course he hadn’t been able to keep quiet for more than a few seconds. 

“If you don’t stay silent, then I will rip your _Zhor_ from your chest. _Slowly_.” 

“My what?” 

_Closer. Closer._

Not human. He’d known it would be so, somewhere deep down, but his heart still sank. Eight of them. More than he would have thought, but then again, Lotor needed Keith to use the Red Lion. What wouldn’t he do to retrieve his blood whore? 

He heard them speaking now. A male, lower-pitched. Through the walls, it was too difficult to get a clear enough reading to decipher who it was. “I’m telling you, the quintessence here is too volatile. Whatever the hell the humans have been doing, it’s completely disrupted the natural flow. Worm-holing out is going to be like navigating a transport ship through a Balmeran sandstorm. It’s too dangerous.” 

A different male voice threatened, “Then I expect you to show me your piloting skills, Ulaz.” __

Keith thought he recognized the name, though he wasn’t sure from where, but before he could consider it, the humans finally heard the clanking of boots on concrete. The two males both immediately called out, whereas the female remained quiet. Keith had already determined that she was the cunning one, so that didn’t surprise him. 

“It’s the Garrison! They’ve come back.” 

“Let us out of here, assholes!” 

Keith didn’t bother to correct them. They’d see soon enough either way. Instead, he was doing his best to control his breathing, to stop the old nightmares and fears from rising to the top and controlling him. _Patience. Patience. Focus._

The Galra finally entered the cell block, four of them staying behind in the lab proper to guard the rear, and four walking up to the cages. Lance gasped and drew back from front of the cell, stumbling back towards Keith only to freeze when he realized what he was doing. Keith hadn’t forgotten that the gun still lay behind him, and he didn’t trust the human not to go for it now that a new threat had appeared. Even if the human had been holding the gun, it wouldn’t have helped against these new invaders anyway. Lotor would never have sent someone incapable of flashing through gunfire to retrieve Keith. But since Keith’s ability to flash was hampered by his injuries and the cramped space, the only person the gun presented any real threat to was himself. 

“Oh my God,” moaned Hunk. 

Keith inhaled as deeply as he could, letting the scents of the intruders wash over him. The first two to walk through the door were male. The third female, and the fourth male, but then the scents of the others were too masked the first four for Keith to parse them out. Definitely a mix of genders though. 

Either way, the lead Galra’s scent washed over Keith as clear as rain. _Sendak._ Keith would have recognized that scent anywhere. Blood, dried sweat, and the remnants of some sort of herbal lotion. Only it didn’t make sense. Sendak was the Witch’s creature, not Lotor’s. The Witch and Lotor were rivals for Zarkon’s affections, so why would her pet be helping the Emperor’s son? 

Sendak laughed as he approached Keith’s cell, and the sound sent a curl of dread down Keith’s spine. “Well, look what we found crawling around the human rat warren. If it isn't my favorite blood-whore.” 

“Sendak,” Keith acknowledged, curt and hostile. Who were the others? Keith still couldn't pick them apart and he hadn’t heard anyone else but Sendak and Ulaz speak, though he presumed that the second male behind Sendak was Ulaz. 

Sendak stopped right in front of the wire mesh, and Keith could feel him looking at the three conscious humans, one by one. “And here I was looking so forward to beating you into submission. But you’re even all locked up for us.” 

Keith remained motionless, though Sendak didn't seem to mind. He just kept talking as if they were old comrades catching up. “Who’s your friend? Hmn? Have you taken to fucking humans now that you don’t have Kuron’s dick to suck?” As Sendak laughed, Keith felt a familiar surge of impotent rage cripple his ability to form rational thoughts, even though these were old insults, and coming from Sendak they had long since lost their power to shock. 

_He can't take anything from you that you don’t give him._

Kuron’s words were a lie. There were plenty of things that Sendak had the power to take from Keith, even if he never would again manage to surprise Keith with his cruelty. 

Sendak rattled the cage door, only to discover that it was locked by some unseen electronic mechanism. He turned to his subordinates behind him. “Get the blood-whore out of there. We’re on a tight enough schedule as it is.” 

One of the soldiers raised a quintessence gun and pointed it directly at Keith and Lance’s cage, only to be stopped by the one who had been standing behind Sendak, and whose name seemed to be Ulaz. “Are you mad?” the deep voiced male demanded of his comrade, “The quintessence flow here is damaged enough without your stupidity adding to the mix. What did you think would happen after you shot at the prisoner we need alive?” 

Letting the gun drop back down, the Galran soldier scowled defensively. His voice had a sort of reedy, whining tone that grated on Keith’s ears. “Come on, Ulaz, I was just gonna blast the cage door open. I wouldn’t have hit him.” 

“Of course not,” replied Ulaz, deeply sarcastic. “There is no way that setting off a burst of quintessence powered percussive force in an enclosed space could have possibly gone wrong.” 

Despite himself, Keith was starting to like this Ulaz. 

The reedy soldier’s snarl deepened. “What do you suggest then, Commander Ulaz?” 

As they sniped at each other, the female soldier bent down to examine the lock. Meanwhile, Lance finally decided that he would rather take his chances with Keith than these new Galra, a decision that Keith couldn’t exactly fault him for. Still, it was rather annoying to have the human suddenly back up to stand next to Keith. He could feel Sendak taking in the sight, making assumptions about what that implied. Especially when said human started to whisper in Keith’s ear, apparently forgetting that all of the Galra could hear his words perfectly well. 

“I’m going to take the gun again, okay? I promise not to shoot you.” 

“No,” Keith hissed. 

“Dude this is not the time to argue. I’m pretty sure they’re planning on killing us all once they get the cages open.” 

Keith would much rather be focusing his attention on what the Galra were doing as opposed to worrying about what sort of stupid shit this human was planning. “They only want to kill you. Not me.” 

“Oh great. No problem then,” snapped Lance, dropping the whisper. “Give me the gun.” 

The gun still lay directly behind Keith’s feet. Lance would have had to basically tackle him to get to it, something he was clearly leery of doing. Well, at least he had some brain cells. 

“Lover’s quarrel in there?”heckled the soldier who had wanted to blast open cages. Keith decided to name him Reedy for the time being. 

Next to Keith, Lance mouthed the Galran words to himself, obviously working out their meaning. Keith was still shocked to know that there was even one of these humans that spoke Galran, let alone that all three of them seemed to have at least a rudimentary knowledge. Lance stood close enough to Keith that the Galra could feel the human’s eyebrows furrowing together, and then the human exclaimed in English, “Oh wait, that’s gross, man.” 

Keith warned him, “Shut up.” 

Not deviating from his previous behavior in any way, Lance ignored Keith’s command to instead demand, “Dude, what exactly do they want with you? It doesn’t sound like ya’ll are friends at all.” 

The female murmured from the other cell, “I bet it’s because he’s with you-know-who. He’s a traitor to the Empire. This is literally the worst case scenario.” 

“Oh, you mean—.” 

“Shut up!” 

Again, Keith was ignored. He was beginning to think it might be worth it to strangle this human to death before Sendak took him back to Lotor. 

“But how would the Empire know you were even here? Your resistance group must have the shittiest secrecy measures ever if the other Galra figured out where you were in like an hour or something.” 

Keith launched himself at the human with a feral shriek. 

They slammed into the opposite cell wall from Hunk and Pidge. Keith’s hands immediately closed around the human’s throat. He could hear one of the Galra laughing and the other humans shouting, but he was too focused on just making this human _shut the fuck up_. The human’s own hands once again dug into Keith’s burn wound, and once again it hurt like a bitch, though this time his burn was at least covered. 

Still, the pain weakened Keith’s grip on the human’s neck enough that the human managed to take the heaving breath that he needed to keep from passing out. As Keith used his weight to cage the human against the wire mesh, the human stomped on Keith’s foot and then clawed at the Galra’s wound. When that didn’t work, he slammed his forehead against Keith’s in panicked desperation. 

Despite himself, Keith stumbled back as his movement sense swam nauseatingly. The human followed him, not willing to give up this fight now that they had renewed it. 

_“Blood of my mother, that’s the fucking Champion!”_

Both Keith and the human froze at the sudden shout. Keith flicked his ears towards the noise. A few feet away, the Galra that Keith had coined Reedy was staring into the cell containing the unconscious abomination. 

Sendak was beside Reedy in an instant. “Well, I’ll be. Here of all places. The damn thing is still alive after all. And sleeping like a baby.” 

Keith wouldn’t have called the abomination’s unconscious state, ‘sleeping like a baby,’ but to each his own. Also, Kuron was the Champion of the Galra, not this thing. Sure, titles could be overtaken through combat, but not by filthy humans. Not like that. 

With a reverent tone, Reedy said, “We could bring them both back, both Paladins in one fell swoop. Think about what this means.” 

Sendak scoffed, “That _thing_ is no Paladin, despite what the Witch says.” 

Keith hated to agree with Sendak on any point, but to that one he had to. He also noticed the pure spite with which Sendak named the Witch. Had they had a falling out? What that why Sendak led a team with Lotor’s colors? 

The woman who’d been examining the lock called out, “Everything electronic in this lab is on a different server than the Garrison’s main server, and I don’t have access to it right now. That wire mesh is likely some sort of human and Balmeran mixed metal, and we don’t have the tools with us to cut it. It would take me hours to break into the server, and clearly we don't have that sort of time.” 

“I guess my idea wasn’t so stupid after all,” Reedy groused triumphantly at Ulaz. 

“No. Your idea is still idiotic,” Ulaz replied, sounding like he was hitting the limit of his patience. Keith was starting to suspect that those two had a history. 

Ignoring Reedy’s offended sputtering, Ulaz made a thoughtful noise, then told them, “The wormhole projection is about fifteen to twenty feet in radius. If we position it correctly, we could simply include both Pala—prisoners from where they are.” 

Keith stopped listening at the word, “wormhole.” His entire body seized up with a painful rush of adrenaline. Suddenly he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t process anything but the wave of terror coursing through every nerve. Sendak’s men had talked about worm-holing in the hallway, yes, but Keith hadn’t really connected the dots. People didn’t wormhole anywhere without the help of a Lion. Not unless they wanted to die, and there were a lot of easier ways to go about that. 

“No,” Keith moaned, forgetting about the human he was still technically fighting. Instead, he backed up as far as he could in the cell, stumbling over the gun as he did so. “No, no, no, no, no.” 

Somewhere the human was picking up the gun while the Galra argued with each other, but Keith was trapped in endless nothingness, a place where there was no heartbeat to tell him that he was even alive, yet he was somehow still aware, painfully, painfully aware. An eternity of helplessness and isolation with just his own mind for company. 

Never again. He’d die first, die for real, except that being trapped in the in-between of a failed wormhole had been a sort of death. Maybe there was nothing else. He tried to find Kosmo’s steady heartbeat as he sometimes did after a nightmare, but in the mass of people and conflicting noises, he couldn’t find it. 

Instead, Lotor and the Red Lion suffused his senses. Demanding, always demanding. 

_I’m coming for you._

No. No, no, no, no, no, no. 

A stinging pain traveled its way across Keith’s cheek, and then he was suddenly back in the cell, aware that he had at some point slid to his knees against the wall, that he was shaking. Desperately, he tried again to focus his senses on what was actually happening in reality, and immediately he realized where the stinging sensation had come from. 

The human had slapped him. The human had actually slapped Keith. One hand remained raised as if he were debating doing it again, and the other held the gun. He snarled at Keith, “Pull yourself together, asshole.” 

Keith couldn’t stop shaking. The word “wormhole” kept repeating over and over in his head. 

The human continued grimly, “Look, maybe we’re all going to die down here. Maybe there’s no hope. But I’m going to fight back with everything I’ve got because that’s least I owe my crew. Now, are you going to join me, or are you going to keep crying down there?” 

The human didn’t understand. He couldn't possibly understand. “I won't go back there,” Keith said in Galran, his ability to cross languages muzzled by his panic. 

But the statement must have been simple enough for the human to follow because the human replied, “Then fucking get up and get ready to fight back.” 

Then the human did something that Keith could never have expected or understood. It was preposterous. The human, Lance (his name was Lance), reached down with one hand, waiting for Keith to take it, _Keith_ , who had tried to kill him several times, who had so far rejected every overture of alliance. And yet here Lance was, offering once again. 

“Why?” 

Lance didn’t remove his hand, though his voice grew more urgent, as with a quick glance, he noticed what Keith already had. Ulaz had begun removing several strange instruments from his bag. “I told you. Because my friends deserve better from me.” Lance’s hand continued to hover over Keith, oddly patient for a person who had so far displayed zero ability in that regard. 

Keith took the human’s hand. 

For once, Lance did not have any snide comments as he hauled the Galra to his feet. 

*~*~* 

Lance didn’t think he had a chance in hell of beating a pack of Galra with a just handgun while locked in a cell. But since he was the only one with even a feasible weapon, and since he was the captain, it was his duty to do _something_ , even if that something was probably pointless. 

_I failed you._

He couldn't bring himself to look at the other cell that held his friends, even knowing that any moment might be his last. Maybe the Galra would only go after his and Shirogane’s cell? Maybe they didn’t care about the wolf. Then they would have no reason to kill his friends, right? 

He didn’t believe that. 

No. The only thing he could do was wait until they finally opened the doors and then do his best give these Galra a fight worthy of his friends and family. 

At one point, he risked a sideways glance at his co-prisoner. The Galra was still shaking, and even Lance, with his human nose, could smell blood. He wasn’t sure if it was the blood loss or the alien’s sudden unexplained mental breakdown that had done him in, but Lance had the feeling that he had less of an ally in this slim Galra then he might have hoped for. Still, at least they weren’t trying to kill each other. For the moment, anyway. 

Lance hadn’t fully understood everything the other Galra were saying to each other despite his best efforts, so he wasn’t a hundred percent sure what they were planning. He did have a talent for languages, yes, and at one point, he’d actually been the best in his class at both Galran and Balmeran, but that had been nearly three years ago. And it wasn’t like he had been practicing conjugating Galran verbs in his daily life as a cargo pilot. 

Still, he had gotten the gist that these Galra were struggling to get past the Garrison security system to unlock the cells. Which just made Pidge seem all the more impressive, not that he was planning on giving these Galra any ideas. Plus, there was something about setting up a wormhole. 

Lance had never seen a wormhole before. He had never thought he would. One of the Galra was busy calibrating some sort of freaky look instruments, but Lance had no idea what a wormhole set-up looked like, so he couldn't say if the whole thing looked worm-holey or not. 

He decided to ask his cellmate. He snapped his finger in Keith’s general direction. “Hey, what are they talking about with the worm-holing? I thought you guys needed to have, like, a Lion to do that? Something about how much energy it takes, right?” 

“I actually know the answer to that one,” Pidge replied, half under his breath. When Lance shot him a surprised glance, he explained, “My dad is a quintessence researcher, remember?” 

“Oh yeah.” Lance did not miss that Pidge used the present tense to describe his dad. 

Pidge looked at the other Galra to make sure they were distracted with whatever it was they were doing, then gripped the mesh between the two cells with both hands, staring Lance down. “The Lions work like a focuser or a funnel. They make everything _more._ But you don’t technically need them to use quintessence.” 

Lance thought about how desperate most of his fellow humans were to return to Earth. “Then I don’t get it. No one else has been like, fuck it, we’ll just use a shit-ton of quintessence to go home?” 

“Are you volunteering?” snarled Keith, surprisingly antagonistic. 

“He doesn’t understand,” Pidge snapped at Keith, “Lance didn’t mean it like that.” To Lance he explained, “To make it all the way to Earth without the help of Voltron, it would take more than just a shit-ton of quintessence. It would take astronomically more energy. And the only place to get that kind of quintessence is from—people.” 

“Like, by killing them?” 

Keith growled, “There are worse fates than death, human. Look at that abomination if you want an example.” 

“Dude, it’s Lance, not _human_. I know you know my name.” 

Pidge interrupted before an argument could start back up, “Essentially, yes. To get to Earth would take an unthinkable amount of either dead or worse-than-dead people. Think more than half of all life on the planet kind of numbers.” 

Lance absorbed that information, then said, “I assume this wormhole they’re setting up isn't going all the way to Earth then. And I don’t see a Voltron Lion anywhere around. So who exactly are they planning on worse-than-deathing to feed it?” 

Keith just stared at him sightlessly before turning away. 

“Oh.” 

“A willing sacrifice is always stronger than an unwilling one, though” Keith offered bitterly as Lance’s dumbfounded silence stretched. “It’s not as if they could have counted on finding three humans locked in a cage for their convenience. That might be why they have so many extra soldiers with them.” 

“That’s—good?” 

“You’ve never been inside a wormhole, have you?” 

“Obviously not.” 

“I’d rather die than experience that again.” Keith didn’t face them as he said it, but Lance felt the Galra’s heartfelt conviction down to his core. 

Lance gulped. “Well, we can try to make that happen when they come for us,” he suggested with false bravery. “Go down swinging and all that.” 

“We won't get the chance,” replied the Galra, his voice deceptively even. His clenched fists and vibrating shoulders told a different story. 

Lance made a noise of sheer frustration. “Okay. And why is that?” 

“It’s a hole in the fabric of space time,” said Pidge, once again providing all the answers. “It doesn’t have to be fucking vertical.” 

Before Lance could reply to Pidge to demand what the fuck that was supposed to mean, the floor below him lit up. A deep and painful violet spread from the central point where the other Galra had set up those strange machines. 

One of the Galra who had originally remained outside in the lab had at some point moved to stand next to the machine. She held a glowing knife, like the one Keith had used to attack the Garrison. With a single sweeping movement, she cut through the artery on her wrist and bellowed, “Vrepit Sa.” Then she collapsed in a spray of blood. 

“Jesus Fucking Christ!” cried out Lance. A woman had just killed herself; died like it was nothing. The idea was incomprehensible. People didn’t do that, not even Galra. Except that she had. The light crackled, strengthening, and there was something so _wrong_ about it, like a cancerous miasma. It wasn’t touching his bare skin, but even through his boots, Lance felt its _coldness_ , the otherness that marked what was happening as something entirely unnatural. He watched in revulsion as the circle of sizzling light beneath him brightened even further, extending all the way to where Shirogane still lay unconscious on the floor. It even traveled far enough to incorporate part of Hunk and Pidge’s cell as well. 

Noticing that jolted Lance, and he spun to face the other cell. His friends remained frozen in shock, not moving away from the rising lights, so he screamed at them, “Hunk! Get out of the way!” 

Hunk blinked, and then grabbed the back of Pidge’s shirt, hauling him backwards. 

Meanwhile, Keith’s ear flicked sideways, and with a sharp inhale he said, “The wolf.” 

Lance cast his gaze down to see that Keith was right. The wolf lay half in the line of fire, half out. Keith pressed against the mesh separating him from his creature, sightless eyes begging the two humans he had earlier scorned. “Please! Please help him.” 

Lance could tell that there wasn’t much time. There was an odd buzzing noise that just kept getting louder and louder, and a pressure building somewhere deep in his chest, making it hard to breathe. 

But Hunk, ever selfless, did not so much as hesitate. His eyes met the blind Galra’s and then he was bending down, grasping the giant wolf by the neck and dragging it back towards Pidge. 

Pidge called out, “Lance, I promise you. Not matter what happens, we will come for you. We will find you.” 

Lance knew he was going to die. Maybe not now, maybe not as some grisly sacrifice, but as soon they landed wherever they were going, he would be killed for being useless baggage. Whatever these Galra wanted, it had to do with Shirogane and Keith, not him. 

“No,” Lance said, trying to swallow down his fear so that his words would come out strong. “You’ve got the anti-viral. Finish what we started. That would make it worth it for me.” 

“—Lance.” 

“Promise me!” 

Keith interrupted them both just as another Galra shouted, “Vrepit Sa!” Lance twisted quickly to see another Galra had seemingly killed themselves to power this wormhole. He could barely process the sheer inhuman atrocity of what was happening, but Keith spoke past the scream, ignoring it completely. Maybe this wasn’t anything new for him. 

“Remember what I told you about the wolf. What to do. If you help him, he will help you.” 

Now the purple lights were rising up, engulfing Keith and Lance. Lance couldn't see anything but blinding color. He felt like something slimy and foreign was crawling down his throat, sinking through his skin. He gagged and fell to his knees. 

The last thing he heard was Pidge calling out, “Wait, I don’t understand, what does that mean?!” 

Then the floor disappeared. Or at least, that’s what it felt like to Lance. One moment he was kneeling there, and the next his stomach was in his chest and he was falling. 

The falling sensation only lasted a few moments before everything squeezed together, an incredible pressure on every ounce of his body as if gravity had not just doubled, but quadrupled, before it faded away. The purple light disappeared, leaving him in darkness. Only it wasn’t just darkness, it was a total absence of light. 

Lance tried to take a breath. 

Nothing happened. 

He tried to move his hands. 

He could not feel them. 

Suddenly he recalled Keith telling them, “I’d rather die than experience that again,” and not comprehending what the hell the Galra had been talking about. Now he thought, with rising horror, that too little too late he might finally understand the desperate, blind Galra that he had so briefly been trapped in a cell with. 

*~*~* 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos feed the bottomless black pit that is my soul.


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